The cowards who did this to my mother should get hard labour
...but they will probably be free in THREE years
THE daughter of an elderly woman, who was subjected to a sustained and brutal attack in her home, has called for ‘penal servitude’ for the culprits who have a combined 128 prior convictions.
Eva Sutton never went back to her home of more than 50 years following the burglary, during which she was assaulted by two men, both on bail. She now lives in a nursing home.
Mrs Sutton’s daughter, Amanda, made the comments after an Irish Mail on Sunday investigation revealed how the now-91-year-old woman’s two cowardly attackers committed their first crimes when they were aged just 12 and 14.
Cash, 24, who was this week jailed for 10 years – with two suspended – for his part in the heinous crime, started his life of crime at the age of 14 when he stole a motorbike.
By the time he was 16, he was robbing people at knifepoint. Over the subsequent eight years, he amassed 96 convictions, an average of one conviction for every month.
He and Jamie O’Brien, 22, broke into Ms Sutton’s home shortly before 5am on September 10, 2015, and subjected the pensioner to a 90-minute ordeal during which she was tied up, beaten and told she would be killed or shot.
Tortured, taunted and dragged around her home by the hair, her attackers beat her with her own walking stick and tied her up with dog leads.
O’Brien, 22 – who is already serving eight years for the crime – first came to Garda attention at the age of 12 when he stole alcohol. By the time he was 13, he had assaulted a young girl so savagely she had seven of her teeth knocked out. He went on to commit over 30 more crimes, almost all for stealing. He was jailed for 10 years – with two suspended – last April for attacking the pensioner.
‘Sentences are not hard enough,’ said Ms Sutton. ‘Bring back the birch, bring back penal servitude – clearing stones from the Burren, as my mother used to say.
‘I only have the utmost respect for the police and the judge was fantastic – it is the laws that need to change,’ she added.
Cash, formerly of Ashlawn Park, Ballybrack, Co. Dublin, was sentenced on Tuesday for false imprisonment, burglary and the serious assault of Ms Sutton at her home in Old Dublin Road, Bray.
Judge Michael Walsh told Wicklow Circuit Court that the attack on Ms Sutton was savagery and amounted to ‘torture’.
Despite being sentenced to 10 years in prison, the thugs could be out of prison much sooner. Cash has been in custody since December 2015. He was sentenced this week to ten years with two suspended. He will automatically avail of the standard 25 percent off his custodial sentence, meaning he will be released at the tail end of 2021. However, he could be out earlier that year if granted ‘enhanced remission’ which sees prisoners getting a third of their custodial sentence.
Ms Sutton told the MoS the two thugs put ‘serious nails’ in her mother’s coffin. ‘She is the living dead,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t murder – it was one down from murder. By rights Mum should be dead with what she went through.
‘She considered her Bray home safe. She wouldn’t have used an alarm – she wouldn’t switch it on for fear of upsetting neighbours.’
Ms Sutton told how an RTÉ interview with her mother, which aired this week, was actually filmed four months ago. Her mother has grown weaker since then. ‘It is poignant to think that was only March. It has been a long old haul for her.’
She added how the cancer her mother had previously beaten had returned.
Ms Sutton went on to say that even people from disadvantaged backgrounds have ‘a choice’ about how they live their lives. Rehab programmes should be mandatory after release from prison, she said.
‘Crime doesn’t pay. But maybe in the Irish justice system it possibly does. They’re in prison, they get their three meals a day, they go the gym, they feel strong and they come out and get straight back into committing crimes again.’
Speaking about the men in court, she said: ‘The hate was just rolling off me. There was a lot of hate in the court room. I hope he felt it.’
Judge Walsh described Eva Sutton this week as a ‘wonderfully independent woman’ in a position to look after herself and live alone in her own home. ‘This was savagely and brutally interrupted on the date in question,’ he said.
‘My mother is the living dead after the attack’ ‘Maybe in our justice system crime does pay’