€30,000 Creché Abuse Compensation Award for Boy Featured on RTÉ Documentary

by | Oct 15, 2019

At the High Court a €30,000 creche abuse compensation award has been been settled in favour of an eight-year-old boy who attended a creche mentioned in an RTE exposé on the treatment of pre-school children when he was just a baby.

Lucas Doyle was just two years old what footage of him allegedly being strapped into a chair for two hours at the Giraffe creche, Belarmine, Stepaside, Co Dublin. as shown on the RTÉ programme ‘A Breach of Trust’.

The Belarmine Giraffe creche was one of three premises selected by the RTE PrimeTime Investigates programme to be the subject of an undercover investigation in to the standard of care provided by pre school services within the State in 2013. The High Court was told that, ten days before the RTE documentary was broadcast, the producer and cameraman of the programme came to the boy’s home with footage due to be broadcast. He showed the young boy’s parents the footage from the Belarmine creche which allegedly showed Lucas in a room where children. Along with him being tied into the chair the children are allegedly being shouted at.

Lucas attended the creche in Belarmine between August 2012 and May 2013, starting when he was 11-and-a-half months’ old until he was a year and eight months old. He (Lucas), through his mother Aisling Emmet, took the creche abuse compensation action against Giraffe Childcare Unlimited Company and its managing director Simon Dowling.

In the legal action they claimed that the footage showed that Lucas being allegedly restrained in a chair for two hours on one day. Giraffe Childcare, through the court, informed the boy’s parents that new safeguards had been put in place after the incident. However his parents had sourced alternative childcare and Lucas was reported to have recovered well from any suffering he had to endure.

Mr Justice Garret Simons approved a creche abuse compensation settlement of €30,000.

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