Posted by Updated / Monday, 2 Mar 2026 14:01
Western Correspondent
A 60-year-old woman has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, with the final four months suspended, after pleading guilty to historical child cruelty charges at Castlebar Circuit Criminal Court.
Jacqueline Curran previously pleaded guilty to two counts of child neglect on a full facts basis at an earlier hearing last year.
Her daughter Sophia Murphy has waived her right to anonymity, allowing for Curran to be named.
The charges against Curran stemmed from her failure to act to prevent persistent abuse carried out by her husband John Murphy.
He is serving an 18-year jail sentence, after pleading guilty to indecent and sexual assaults he perpetrated on the victim between 1988 and 2001.
Sentencing was adjourned until today, to allow for completion of probation and psychiatric reports.
The State’s case was that Curran willfully exposed Ms Murphy to ill treatment, in a manner likely to cause harm.
The court heard that Sophia Murphy was subjected to “depraved, deeply inappropriate and extensive abuse” by her father.
While the prosecution did not argue that Curran witnessed the abuse of Sophia Murphy, it did contend that, due to the frequency at which it occurred, she was aware of it.
Over the course of the proceedings, Garda Inspector Thomasina McHugh told Judge Sinéad McMullan that the victim was aged between three and 16 years of age, at the time the abuse took place. It happened on a daily basis in multiple rooms of the family home and also in a car.
The offences were said to have been carried out in a “brazen” manner and were “prolific in their frequency”.
Sophia Murphy told gardaí that she believed her mother knew from at least 1993 what was going on.
She said her mother didn’t believe her “even when I was brave enough to say he was abusing me”.
In 2001 Curran told her daughter that the family would be broken up if a complaint she had made about her father progressed.
When Curran was arrested in 2019, she initially denied any knowledge of the abuse, before eventually admitting she had been told about it by a friend and neighbour her daughter had confided in.
She was charged under Section 12 of the 1908 Children Act.
Defending barrister Diarmuid Connolly said no allegations of abuse had been made against his client, who has no previous convictions.
He said she accepted she should have done more to prevent the offences against her daughter and that the interventions she made were not good enough.
Mr Connolly said the abuse had resulted in Curran being estranged from her family and totally isolated from her children and grandchildren.
Mr Connolly argued a custodial sentence would be unduly harsh.
Serious harm caused by ‘serious breach of trust’ – Judge
At today’s hearing, Judge McMullan said there could be no doubt about the serious harm caused by the “serious breach of trust” on the part of Curran. Her actions “fell far short of the duty of care that every parent has”, on a continual basis over a number of years.
Judge McMullan said that in reaching her decision, she had considered the probation and psychiatric reports which were furnished to the court.
She acknowledged that the defendant was considered to be at low risk of reoffending, had entered a guilty plea and had no previous convictions. She was also mindful of Curran’s “developing remorse” for her failures, her age and her personal circumstances.
But the judge said it was her view that the threshold for a custodial sentence had been reached and that this should send a signal to mark society’s revulsion at the nature of the crimes in question.
The maximum sentence for each of the two counts to which Curran pleaded guilty to was two years.
Judge McMullan said she was imposing an 11-month prison term in respect of one of the counts, and seven months in relation to the other one, to be served consecutively.
She said she would suspend the last four months of the second term, for two years, on condition that Curran keeps the peace, engages with the probation service and enters her own bond of €100.
Ms Murphy was watching proceedings via video link, having emigrated to Asia in recent months.
In a victim impact statement, presented during the course of the proceedings, Ms Murphy outlined how the abuse perpetrated by her father had a deep and lasting effect on her life.
Mother’s silence over abuse the ‘deepest wound of all’ – victim
But she said the “deepest wound of all” resulted from her mother’s silence and her willingness to look away while she was suffering.
She said that instead of shielding her and loving her unconditionally, Curran had left her alone with fear, shame and confusion.
“Your choices taught me that my pain didn’t matter, that my voice didn’t matter, that I didn’t matter, and that damage followed me for decades,” she said.
She detailed how she felt betrayed and experienced a deep sense of emotional abandonment.
This led to 20 years of substance dependancy, anxiety and an eating disorder.
The 40-year-old credited her daughter and her partner for “giving me a reason to fight” and helping her to discover an inner strength she didn’t know she had.
Ms Murphy told the court she was emigrating “not to run from my past, but to step fully into my future”.
However, she said her mother’s failings had changed the entire direction of her life and created wounds she had spent decades trying to close, leaving scars that would never disappear.
She concluded her statement by saying she was making it for “the little girl who never had a voice; for the teenager who slept in sheds to avoid home; for the woman who fought trauma alone; for her deceased sister, who had lived with the darkness of abuse too; and for her daughter, who deserved a mother who wasn’t broken”.
Speaking after she delivered the statement in December, Ms Murphy said she was determined that her childhood experiences would not define her, or her relationships with others.
She urged anyone living with the shame of abuse to seek help and begin the journey towards recovery.
“There’s a lot of shame and guilt that comes with abuse, which is, not yours. And there are so many places out there, like rape crisis centres and stuff, which are amazing for people.
“I know it’s hard to reach out and get that help but don’t live a lie like I did. If you know that something isn’t right … please go and seek support. Talk to a friend, anybody,” she said.
“I never felt normal, I never felt loved, I never felt seen, I always felt like I was different, like there was something wrong with me, and it wasn’t me at all. It was what I went through.
“It was the grooming and it was the abuse, it was everything that my parents moulded me to be. And it wasn’t until I found my own voice I broke free from that,” added Ms Murphy.
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