‘House of Horrors’: Cruel Midlands stepfather brutally beat and treated partner’s children ‘like slaves’

A “cruel" stepfather, who abused his partner’s children by severely beating, degrading and starving them while “treating them like slaves”, has been jailed for four years.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the three complainants, appeared before Judge Keenan Johnson at Mullingar Circuit Court, where evidence was heard of how the children lived in a “house of horrors”, subject to degrading physical and mental abuse.

Judge Johnson remarked that the treatment of the children by the accused was “absolutely shocking”, and that the house was “run like a workhouse, similar to the one described by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist”.

“It is clear that the children and the household were ruled with a rod of iron by the accused, who used violence, intimidation, admonishment and degradation as tools of repression and control,” he said.

“The children were in constant fear, were regularly beaten, forced to work long hours in difficult conditions, and malnourished. Their innocence and childhoods were stolen by the malevolent actions of the accused.”

The man, now in his 60s, pleaded guilty to three counts of child cruelty, as well as one count of assault causing harm to his stepson. The indictment contained 19 further counts of assault causing harm, which were taken into consideration.

Each of the complainants, in powerful victim impact statements, outlined how they suffer from lasting physical damage from the brutal beatings to which they were subjected on almost a daily basis as children from the early-90s until each of them left home.

The complainants - two sisters who were in their early teens and their younger brother, who was just six years old when the abuse started - were forced to do constant manual labour such as cleaning the kitchen tiles with a nail brush or being left on the bog from early morning until late evening with little to no food.

Garda James Grogan outlined to Cathal Ó’Braonáin BL, prosecuting, that the family was vulnerable and grieving the death of their father when the accused man, then in his early 30s, came into their lives in 1992 and started to control them, the court heard.

The brother’s earliest memory of meeting the accused was when he was sitting on the porch roof, with his legs dangling over the sides. He told Gardaí he would often sit there when he felt sad about his father’s death.

He said he had not yet met the accused and, that day as he sat on the porch roof, he felt the man grabbing his leg “out of nowhere” and pulling him off the roof before punching the six-year-old child in the nose with a closed fist.

Following that encounter, the boy tried to stay close to his mother out of fear, often forgetting to go to the toilet, which caused him to soil himself on a regular basis. This would result in severe beatings, the court heard, as well as degradation and humiliation.

On one occasion, he dragged the boy to his bedroom and, when his mother followed, the accused told her to “fuck off” or she’d get it too. He put a pillow over the boy’s face and sat on it so he couldn’t breathe. When he got off him, he brought the child to the toilet and forced him to sit on it until he had a bowel movement.

The boy received the worst of the treatment at such a young age, with one of his sisters telling Gardaí he would “go into convulsions” from “crying so hard he couldn’t breathe”.

The accused would hit him “in a frenzy” so many times and would only stop when the boy’s mother was screaming. He “maniacally beat him” so many times he often couldn’t sit down afterwards.

The older of the two girls outlined to Gardaí how, on one occasion she had gone to the neighbour’s house, at her mother’s request, to borrow a fiver as money was tight. She told Gardaí that the accused would “go mad” if they borrowed money and he found out about this particular incident when the neighbour’s daughter came to the door, looking for the return of the fiver.

She told Gardaí the accused came behind her and pushed her against the wall before taking a wooden shovel handle and beating her with it. The court heard how he made the entire family stand in the room and watch and they all screamed at him and begged him to stop, but he only did so when there was a knock at the front door.

The accused became more violent after that, the court heard. He would belittle and degrade them. He would have his ring on his finger and slap them on the back of their heads where the mark wouldn’t show.

The younger of the two sisters told Gardaí that, after her half sister was born, the children were brought to visit their mother at the hospital. When they got home, the accused brought the girl to the back bedroom and accused her of stealing money on the ward.

He started hitting her and, the more she denied it, the angrier he’d get, the court heard. He was “always on top of her and dominating her while he hit her”.

The girl didn’t like curry and, on one occasion, when she refused to call him dad, he made her a bowl of potatoes and curry sauce and forced her to eat it. He slapped her around the head and told her that from now on she was to call him dad. When she refused, he forced her to finish the bowl. She woke up that night with a sick stomach.

The court heard how he would line all the children up and cut their finger- and toenails so short that they would start to bleed. On one occasion, he lined up all the children and interrogated them over family photos he couldn’t find. When they couldn’t tell him where they were, he beat each of them with a steel poker.

The home was “like a prison” at mealtimes. Food was rationed, the court heard, and the children often went to bed hungry. The accused would feed them porridge with salt for breakfast and they were forced to eat what they were given or they’d go hungry.

He would make them go out to look for kindling and firewood every day, and he made them clean the floors of their home constantly. He would often inspect their bedrooms, opening the wardrobes and, if anything was even slightly out of place, he would pull everything out and make them start again.

The brother told Gardaí that he was badly bullied in school because the accused would buy him clothes and shoes that were too small for him. The man also began feeding him cold food which he’d cook while the boy was at school.

If he didn’t eat it, the accused would “pick it off the plate and shove it down his throat, making him gag”, the court heard. The boy would be in tears over this.

The boy began to abuse substances at a young age, often sniffing petrol or gas. The court heard how, when he was 16 or 17 years old, he put his mouth around the petrol cap of the car and was seen by the accused who kicked him as hard as he could. He spent the next two hours getting “the absolute shit kicked out of him”. On another occasion, he was locked in the shed overnight.

The girls managed to get away from the house in their teens, the court heard, but for their brother, the abuse continued until he was 21 years old. He told Gardaí he was beaten “to a pulp” daily, “if not multiple times a day”.

All three complainants made attempts at taking their own lives, the court heard, and in their victim impact statements, they each referred to their childhood home as a “house of horrors”.

The brother outlined how the “horrific beatings and humiliation” often made him think he was going to die, as “every moment, every breath carried fear” in a house of “fear, screams and helplessness”, with “no love, no respect and never any remorse”.

The older of the two sisters recalled the cries of her younger siblings as they were put across his knee and slapped at the age of two or three years old.

“I attempted suicide multiple times as a teen and once as an adult,” she said. “He drove a wedge between us. The entire family was fractured.”

The younger of the sisters said it was “never ending work at home and outside the home and after that, the punishments”. She cried herself to sleep every night, she said and, as a teenager, she ran away from home and went into foster care.

“But I worried about my siblings. I tried to overdose with the guilt of leaving them,” she said.

Judge Johnson heard from John Hayden SC how the accused man lost his own mother at a young age and ended up in a children’s home before returning home when his father remarried. However, he didn’t get along with his stepmother and ended up homeless as a teenager.

“It is ironic that the accused, having suffered such trauma in his childhood, should then go on to treat his stepchildren in such a cruel and uncompassionate way,” said Judge Johnson.

“One would have thought that he would have empathy for the situation that his stepchildren found themselves in but, regrettably, this was not the case.”

The man has no previous convictions and Judge Johnson was satisfied that he is at low risk of reoffending because of his age, poor health and the fact that he is no longer in a parental role to young children. He also noted an apology was offered, though he said it was “too little, too late”. €5,000 was also brought to court as a token for the complainants.

Judge Johnson proceeded to sentence him to a total of four years in prison, with no period of suspension warranted. He directed the €5,000 be divided between the complainants, whom he said “are to be commended for their fortitude and bravery”.

“I wish them nothing but joy and happiness for the rest of their lives, they deserve nothing less,” he said.

“They have done a great service not only to themselves by reporting the abuse but also to society at large by highlighting the issue of child abuse and providing a pathway for other victims to seek justice.”

Funded by the Courts Reporting Scheme