{"id":411145,"date":"2026-04-22T04:08:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T04:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411145\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T04:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T04:08:12","slug":"family-courts-described-as-modern-mother-and-baby-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/411145\/","title":{"rendered":"Family courts described as modern Mother and Baby Homes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A Mayo woman and former Garda has said that family courts have become the \u201cmodern-day version of Mother and Baby Homes\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Margaret Loftus has today been speaking at the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Home Affairs, and Migration, which has also been hearing from representatives of domestic violence organisations.<\/p>\n<p>In January, Margaret Loftus\u2019 former husband, also a Garda, walked free from court on a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to assaulting his then wife on October 12, 2012.<\/p>\n<p>Ms Loftus was asked by Sinn F\u00e9in TD for Mayo Rose Conway-Walsh about any possible crossover of the family law courts and criminal courts\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.midwestradio.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LOFTUS1.wav\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.midwestradio.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LOFTUS1.wav<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Deputy Conway-Walsh also asked Margaret Loftus what \u201ctrue accountability\u201d would look like in the area of domestic abuse\u2026<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.midwestradio.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LOFTUS2.wav\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.midwestradio.ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/LOFTUS2.wav<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Mayo woman and former Garda has said that family courts have become the \u201cmodern-day version of Mother&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-411145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}