A MOTHER-OF-three who was cleared of sexually assaulting her children, despite evidence she had admitted to abusing them during a lie-detector test, has had her acquittal overturned and will be sent back for trial, the Court of Appeal has ruled.
The woman was acquitted after a judge ruled that the admissions made during an interview with a forensic psychologist using a polygraph machine were inadmissible as evidence.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) sought a determination that the judge had “erroneously excluded compelling evidence” when the woman stood trial in July 2021.
The prosecutor has also requested that the acquittal be quashed, as well as an order stating that the respondent is to be re-tried in respect of the complaints on the original indictment.
Today at the Court of Appeal, Mr Justice George Birmingham said the three-judge court would quash the acquittal and order a re-trial out of “overall fairness” in a case he described as having an “unusual background”.
Mr Justice Birmingham said that at a “basic level of fairness” the interviews should be admitted in the re-trial but noted that they did “depart from the familiar”.
The judge said the interviews’ purposes were both to “assess risk and to safeguard”, adding that the woman had “extensive” legal advice at the time.
Mr Justice Birmingham said that the trial judge was wrong to exclude the interviews and the court would quash the acquittal and direct a re-trial.
After he read his ex-tempore judge today, he said a full judgement would be published in the near future.
In papers submitted to the Court of Appeal, it was stated gardaí visited the respondent at a house she was sharing with her husband and children following a tip-off from Europol that someone at that location was uploading child abuse images to the internet.
The images showed young children in a domestic setting being sexually abused by an adult.
In one of the videos, a child can be heard crying as he is abused.
Shortly after gardaí visited the address in the south-west of Ireland, the children were placed into care on foot of a High Court order.
The respondent later agreed to take a lie-detector test conducted by a forensic psychologist using a polygraph after denying to gardaí all knowledge of the abuse and claiming her husband was solely responsible.
However, she later admitted to the psychologist that not only was she aware that her husband was interested in child pornography, she also was aware he had been abusing their children and at times she had taken part in the abuse.
She also admitted to abusing the children when her husband wasn’t there and when she was on her own with them.
Following the admissions, she was charged with four counts of sexual assault against three boys, contrary to Section 2 of the Criminal Law (Rape) (Amended) Act 1990, and one count of allowing a child in her custody to be assaulted, ill-treated and neglected, contrary to Section 246 (1) and (2) of the Children Act 2001.
The alleged offences took place between 3 August 2008 and 25 March 2015.
After the trial judge heard evidence from the woman’s interviews with the psychologist during a voire dire – a trial within a trial where evidence is heard in the absence of the jury – he ruled that the evidence should not go before the jury.
Following the ruling, he agreed to a ‘no case to answer’ application by the defence. The woman was acquitted of all charges after this application was unopposed by the DPP.
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