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A woman who stabbed her now 11-year-old daughter over 70 times after she came to Ireland to escape the Russia- Ukraine war has been jailed for nine years.
At a previous hearing of the case last April, a court heard that the woman pleaded for help with her mental health condition in the days leading up to the assault.
Justice Kerida Naidoo heard that the woman, who came to Ireland with her husband, who then “went AWOL”, had a “long history of anxiety and depression” as well as a documented history of mental health issues in her homeland.
The court heard that on the 27th of September 2022, the woman came into her then 9-year-old daughter’s room before stabbing her with a kitchen knife as the child lay in bed, having just woken up. In her victim impact statement read before the court by family liaison officer Garda Emer McDonagh, the child, who has now been placed with a foster family, had no time to react between seeing the knife in her mother’s hand and when the stabbing began.
After stabbing her on her bed, the mother dragged the child into an en suite bathroom before stabbing her again. Although a significant number of the cuts to the child’s body were described as “superficial” in depth, a deep stab wound to her chest left blood seeping into the pericardium area of her heart, which had to be drained.
In her victim impact statement, the child said that she has a large scar on her chest and feels as though she won’t be able to wear dresses or normal swimwear because of the scars on other parts of her body.
The girl said that she was “screaming for her to stop” and that she didn’t think she could feel pain, but felt that there was “something stuck” in her throat. She said that she was thinking of “saying goodbye to this world” and of her “best friend” when she was lifted from the bed and taken to the en suite.
The girl recounted her mother saying, I’m sorry, I never wanted to do this,” and that she said that she “never wanted them to take you away from me,” to which the child responded, “If they take me away, I will escape and come back to you.”
She described struggling to grasp why the mother who had “spent on her money” to make the girl smile, fed and taken care of her all her life, could attempt to end her life.
“The nightmare of you trying to kill me never left,” she said.
“I don’t love or hate you,” she wrote, saying that she has “no feelings” for her mother or her father, who also has a diagnosed mental health disorder, anymore.
“I hope you have a nice time in prison,” the victim impact statement concluded.
James O’Reilly SC, prosecuting, told the court that the woman had a “fixation” at the time that the child would be taken from her and that she had accepted that she intended to kill her daughter and herself on the date in question.
She said that at the time she felt as though she was in a “thriller movie” and that her “sick mind” was giving her “ideas” about how to harm the child. Garda witnesses said that there were empty pill packs at the property, with the accused admitting that she had taken up to 50 pills, some of which were obtained in Russia.
When Gardaí arrived on the scene at 8:30 am, they “kicked the door in” after seeing blood through the window. On entering the property, they found the girl in the en suite, while the accused was discovered in a “catatonic state” with her pupils unresponsive.
After a two-week trial where the “battleground” was in relation to her “state of mind” on that morning, Mr O’Reilly said that a jury had returned a verdict of guilty of attempted murder, in which the defence had “sought to rely” on a special verdict due to the mental state of the accused.
Defending counsel, Mark Nichols SC, described the incident as a “terrible scene”, “a tragedy” and a “sad case”, noting that other people living in the unit with the mother and child had said that they seemed to have a “very good” relationship up until the date of the attempted murder.
He said that it had been noticed in the preceding days that the woman was showing signs of mental distress, being “quite depressed”, and that she had made two attempts to return to Russia, including taking an over 300 euro taxi journey.
On the 20th of October, she called an ambulance before spending a day in hospital. She was also prescribed anti psychotic medication after an electronic consultation with a doctor, but was not examined in person, the court heard.
The court heard that when the accused heard she would be taken in for treatment at a psychiatric ward, she “fell on her knees” in gratitude.
Mr Nicholas said that the upheaval of moving from her homeland had “triggered” her systems, and that because she was “moved around the country” while in the international protection system in Ireland, she did not have the constant care of a GP. The accused became worried that she was not on the right medication, which the court heard led to her “panicked” attempts to return to Russia to get what she believed she needed.
Justice Naidoo noted that while there was some disagreement between the defence and prosecution psychiatrists about what exact mental health disorder the accused was suffering from at the time, the jury had agreed that she was severely impaired but knew what she was doing was wrong and should have been able to refrain.
Today, before the Central Criminal Court, the woman was sentenced to nine years in prison. Justice Naidoo said that it had been the accused’s intention to kill the child despite her daughter “begging” her mother to stop stabbing her.
Justice Naidoo imposed a sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment before suspending the final three years for three years, resulting in an actual sentence of nine years, which was backdated to March 2023 to give credit for time already spent in custody.
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