Woman harassed son’s school principal

A WOMAN has been found guilty of harassing a school principal and deputy principal during a protest campaign she launched after she felt her son had been mistreated over a bullying allegation.

Thurles District Court heard that Eileen Phelan, 55, of Rathpatrick, Co. Kilkenny, mounted a six-year protest outside Galmoy National School in Co. Kilkenny.

She and her family were upset when the school insisted on keeping a 2010 letter on file containing an allegation of bullying against her then ten-year-old son, despite him being found innocent.

The school said it would keep it on file with the names ‘blacked out’. The school’s deputy principal, Bernadette Bergin, said that on February 28, 2017, Ms Phelan began ‘screaming hysterically’ at her when she pulled up at the school, and that it happened the following morning too.

Ms Bergin said Ms Phelan shouted ‘face up to your responsibilities’ and ‘stop playing around with a young man’s life’.

On one occasion, the accused had a copy of the book The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and was waving that at Ms Bergin, as well as the placard she always brought.

‘I was terrified going into work,’ the witness said. ‘I felt terrorised by this and very, very frightened.’

The school principal at the time, Brian Boyle, said Ms Phelan told him he was ‘a disgrace’ and a ‘stain on the school’, and that this would happen as he arrived in the mornings and left in the evenings.

A car park was built to allow staff to drive into school grounds without having to get out of their cars near Ms Phelan, he said.

Ms Phelan said the letter, sent by another parent, was the problem as it contained ‘very serious allegations’.

As a result of the letter, she withdrew her son and his two younger siblings from the school.

Ms Phelan denied harassing the staff members, saying: ‘I was protesting.’

Judge Elizabeth MacGrath ruled that the ingredients were present to find the harassment charges proven.

She adjourned the case until February 26 next year and kept bail conditions from earlier this year in place, including that Ms Phelan stay away from the school and all injured parties.

She referred the case to the restorative justice programme in a bid to resolve ‘the totality’ of the matters at stake.