By Sonya McLean
A man who threw his son against a metal bed frame when the young boy tried to stop his father attacking his pregnant mother has been remanded in custody pending sentence.
The court heard that the children of the house called the gardaí to alert them to the fact that their father was assaulting their mother.
When officers arrived, they found a young infant lying in her cot crying. Her Babygro was covered in her mother’s blood and the woman was lying in an unconscious state nearby.
A local garda told Aideen Collard BL, prosecuting that she was directed to an upstairs bedroom by a 15-year-old girl, the oldest child in the house.
When the officer walked into the room, the man was kneeling over the woman, with his hands just below her neck near her collar bone.
She demanded that he move away from the woman and he did so.
She then went to the baby in the cot and confirmed that she was unharmed.
The woman was five months pregnant at the time and drifting in and out of consciousness. There were pools of blood on the floor and she was bleeding heavily from her head.
The garda said the three other children, an 11 year old, a 12 year old and the 15-year-old girl were huddled together in a distressed state in another bedroom.
The 12-year-old boy had bruising to his shoulders and a cut on his face.
He told gardaí that he had woken up to his parents fighting. “I tried to save my mam,” he said, but his father dragged him out of the room and threw him against a metal bed frame.
The boy then got upset and started crying.
The woman later told gardaí that the man hit her hard in the head and she was afraid he was going to kill her in front of the baby.
“I saw hate in his eyes. I thought I was going to die.
I was trying to stay awake because I was afraid I was going to lose the baby,” the woman said referring to the fact that she was pregnant with her fifth child.
The man was taken into custody that night.
The woman was brought to hospital and the four children taken into State care.
The children were returned to their mother when she was released from hospital the following day.
The 32-year-old man, who cannot be identified to protect the identity of his son, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting his partner causing her harm and to assaulting his son at their family home in Dublin on November 29, 2020. He has no previous convictions.
Judge Melanie Greally adjourned the case to October 14, 2022 and ordered the preparation of a report from the Probation Service for that date to allow for a spousal assault risk.
The judge acknowledged that the man’s partner had not prepared a victim impact statement and was still in a relationship with the man.
She accepted that the woman wanted her partner to be released from prison and to get help in the community but said she could not remand the man on bail.
Judge Greally told the woman that she and her partner had to face the reality that he would be going to prison for doing what he did that night.
The woman replied that her children were expecting their father to get out of jail and “were excited to see their daddy”.
Judge Greally told the woman that her partner’s behaviour was impacting on both her and her children and there is “no question that he will be serving time for these assaults”.