A father who believed his daughter was possessed by an evil spirit and engaged in “savage” physical abuse which “destroyed” her and left her with a catastrophic brain injury, has failed in a bid to overturn his convictions.
The then nine-year-old girl was regularly punched, beaten with a belt and a stick, choked, bitten and badly burned all over her body at the hands of both her father and mother, whose other children testified against them at trial last year.
The girl is now in a care centre and can no longer walk, talk or sit independently since the brain injury.
The man (41), who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his daughter, also claimed through his legal team that he was less culpable because he was at work for the most damaging assault carried out by his wife.
The man, who is from North Africa, pleaded not guilty to two counts of assault causing serious harm and to three counts of child cruelty, telling gardaí he believed his daughter to be possessed by a devil, known in the Arabic community as a 'jinn'.
The man's initial account to gardaí was that the girl had self-harmed and pulled out her hair before falling in the shower.
The court heard that on one occasion the mother put the girl’s hand onto a hot stove as she screamed in pain, before binding her hands and feet and burning her with a hot knife.
At the trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, a lecturer in psychology in the field of faith-based child abuse said familial attempts to rid children of 'jinns' can include beating, burning, cutting, semi-strangulation, starving and rubbing chilli peppers on a child's eyes or genitalia.
Serious harm
In October 2021, the girl's parents were each convicted by a jury of two counts of assault causing serious harm and three counts of child cruelty at the family home in Dublin on dates between June 28 and July 2, 2019.
In sentencing the couple in March of last year, Judge Martin Nolan said their child will be dependent on carers for the rest of her life as a result of the "catastrophic" injuries she sustained at their hands.
The man appealed both his conviction and his sentence.
At the Court of Appeal on Monday, the man's conviction appeal was dismissed by the three-judge court, but his sentence appeal resulted in a reserved judgement.
James B Dwyer SC, for the man, submitted that the trial judge erred in "incorrectly addressing the jury in relation to the law of common design" and in not directing the jury to find the man not guilty on the two assault causing harm charges along with one count of child cruelty.
Mr Dwyer submitted that "the trial judge erred in failing to direct a verdict of not guilty where the prosecution had not reached the threshold in relation to 'joint enterprise', in that the DPP failed to provide evidence of an agreement, tacit or otherwise, between the parties".
Counsel said it had been established by the evidence of another child in the house that the man was out of the family home when the traumatic brain injury was inflicted by the child's mother.
Criminally liable
Mr Dwyer said the appellant's absence from the scene and the fact that he was not told for some time of the incident excluded the possibility that he could have altered the outcome of the brain injury by calling an ambulance.
Counsel said that, in law, when two persons embark on a joint enterprise, each is criminally liable for acts done in pursuance of the enterprise but that when one of them goes beyond what had been agreed the other is not liable for the consequences of the unauthorised act.
Mr Dwyer said that at the trial a video call was played in which the girl's mother tells the father about what happened, to which he responds: "Are you crazy? Why would you do that?"
Anne Rowland SC, for the State, submitted that the violence against the child was carried out on a daily basis by both parents with the man choking the child while holding her off the ground, rendering her unconscious.
Counsel also submitted that a sibling of the girl said in evidence that the man kicked and choked the girl and made fun of her injuries and of her inability to walk due to the assault.
In dismissing the application, Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy said the court was not persuaded that the trial judge erred in refusing an application for a not guilty direction because "there was evidence from which the jury could infer an agreement to inflict injury on the child over a period of time".
Ms Justice Kennedy said the trial judge answered questions from the jury foreperson sufficiently, adding that "they [the jury] can be left in no doubt whatsoever" of the concept of joint enterprise.
"We are satisfied that the judge properly directed the jury on joint enterprise, the final words spoken by the judge could not have been clearer.
"We do not accept that the jury were confused or had a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of joint enterprise," said Ms Justice Kennedy, who then dismissed the conviction appeal.
Mr Justice George Birmingham, presiding, said the court would reserve its judgement on the sentence appeal.
