An ‘evil’ stepmother who ‘snapped’ and murdered a four-year-old boy after subjecting him to weeks of horrific abuse is facing life in jail in Ireland.
The woman, in her 30s and from the southwest of the country, pleaded guilty to the boy’s murder on the fourth day of her trial at the Central Criminal Court last year.
The child’s mother described the actions of the stepmother and the boy’s father as a ‘betrayal’ after she had trusted them to look after her ‘beautiful, innocent baby boy’.
The trial heard that on March 13, 2021, the child’s father phoned emergency services saying his son had fallen from the top bunk of his bed one hour earlier and could not be roused.
When paramedics arrived, they found the boy unresponsive. They rushed him to hospital and despite emergency intervention and surgery, he did not recover.
Medical professionals noted numerous bruises of various ages all over the child’s face, head, torso, and legs that were indicative of non-accidental injuries or abuse.
The father explained the injuries by saying his son was ‘the clumsiest child ever’ and that he had run into a door or been hurt playing football.
However, it emerged during the stepmother’s trial that the boy had been subjected to physical abuse for weeks and spent four days grounded in his room before his stepmother shook him and struck his head off the floor.
He had also suffered a blunt force injury to his abdomen that lacerated his liver. A pathologist found that either injury to the head or the liver would have caused death on their own.
An ‘evil’ stepmother who ‘snapped’ and murdered a four-year-old boy after subjecting him to weeks of horrific abuse is facing life in jail in Ireland. Pictured: General view of Dublin Central Criminal Court
The defendant claimed the boy was a ‘bold, cheeky child’ and often had to be grounded.
She told gardaí that on the day he suffered his fatal injuries, she ‘snapped’ and recalled ‘shaking him and screaming at him to behave’ before he fell on the floor.
The parties cannot be identified due to an order made by Judge Paul McDermott under the Children Act to protect the identity of a child witness.
Judge McDermott will sentence the stepmother tomorrow to the mandatory term of life imprisonment for murder, before hearing an application by broadcaster RTÉ and media group Mediahuis to lift the order preventing the defendant’s identification.
He will also sentence the stepmother for two counts of child cruelty in relation to wilful assaults on the same child in January and March 2021.
In November 2024, the child’s father was sentenced to seven years in prison having pleaded guilty to endangerment, neglect and impeding the apprehension or prosecution of the stepmother, knowing or believing she had murdered his son.
Passing sentence at the time, Judge McDermott described the father’s actions as ‘shameful’ and said he bore a high level of criminal responsibility for failing to nurture and protect his son.
In her statement yesterday, the child’s mother said her son was born in early 2016, a ‘fine, healthy little boy’.
She described him as a ‘clever little child who brought so much love and happiness into all our lives’. When his sister played peekaboo with him or tickled him, he would laugh, making everyone else laugh, she said.
‘He had the biggest smile and the most beautiful brown eyes. He was a perfect little boy,’ she said.
When he potty-trained himself at just 18 months, he felt he was a ‘little man’ and would insist on walking instead of going in his buggy, she said.
‘He adored his younger siblings and would insist on helping to care for them and would kiss and cuddle them,’ she added.
The child’s mother said she thinks of her son ‘crying for help, not understanding what was happening’, and added that she knows the child would have been frightened and looking for her.
She said: ‘I find it so hard to understand why they did what they did, why medical assistance was not sought so that maybe he would be here today. I can’t begin to imagine the pain he suffered in the weeks leading up to his death.’
She said she planned the funeral herself and recalled how the child’s father and stepmother ‘stood in God’s holy house and said how much they loved him and that he was a superhero’.
She said his life was taken by ‘pure evil’, by someone her son ‘loved and trusted’.