A mental health patient sent explicit and obscene text messages to his clinical nurse specialist, Ballina District Court heard on Tuesday.
On March 20 this year, Liz McHale, a clinical nurse specialist in addiction with Mayo Mental Health Services, HSE West, made a complaint to gardaí that she had received obscene text messages to her work mobile.
The matter was investigated and it came to light that the phone from which the messages were sent had been stolen. It was traced to Declan Cosgrove, Dispensary Road, Foxford. The defendant admitted taking the phone and sending the messages.
Ms McHale had been treating the defendant at the time and as the incident upset her it led to her taking time off work.
Peter Loftus, solicitor for the defendant, said that his client acknowledges the seriousness of his conduct and Cosgrove believes that the medication he was taking at the time led him to act like this. A psychologist report was furnished to Judge Mary Devins, but the judge said that she would need a psychiatrist’s report to outline the current treatment which the defendant is receiving, and to also outline whether the prescribed drug could affect him to cause these offences, as he claims. The case was adjourned until February 22 2011.
