By Isabel Hayes
A man who engaged in a prolonged campaign of coercive control and violence against his partner, forcing her to keep a camera doorbell on her so he could monitor her at all times, has been jailed for five years.
Until he went into custody yesterday, the man had weekly access to his two children with the woman, who queried in her victim impact statement why there was no link between family and criminal courts with regards to decisions on child custody.
The 41-year-old Dublin man, who can’t be named to protect the anonymity of the children involved, pleaded guilty to one count of coercive control and three counts of assault causing harm to the woman on locations in Dublin and Co Clare on dates between 2017 and 2020.
The court heard the man took the woman’s social welfare payments, did not allow her to have a phone, isolated her from her family, installed a house alarm but didn’t give her the code to restrict her movements and locked doors in the house.
He also bought a Ring doorbell and forced her to have it with her at all times so he could watch her and ensure she was not “entertaining” anyone, Detective Sergeant Nicola Duffy told Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting.
When he rang the doorbell, she had to answer it instantly and show him both her hands and what she was doing, the court heard.
In her victim impact statement, which she read out in court, the woman said that towards the end of the relationship, she was being beaten by the man on a near daily basis.
She described the fear it caused her children, who eventually stopped asking her why she was bruised.
And she recalled being told by her son’s junior infant teacher that the little boy had expressed fear his mammy was going to be killed by the man.
The court heard the woman was left bloodied, bruised and injured a number of times at the hands of the man, including while on holidays in Co Clare, Scotland and Spain.
On a trip to Madrid, he was taken into custody by Spanish police who released him when she agreed not to press charges.
On another occasion, he fractured her finger with his phone as she tried to protect her head from him.
The court heard that the couple first met online in 2016, shortly after the woman had broken up with a previous partner – the father of her two children.
She and her children moved in with the man in 2017, and he started behaving violently towards her about nine months later.
The court heard the woman had two more children with the man, but also suffered a miscarriage in the course of their relationship.
The man accused her of taking something to “kill the baby” and also talked about getting a DNA test from the deceased baby to ensure it was definitely his.
This did not ultimately take place.
The woman described attempting to escape the man on one occasion, taking the children in a taxi to the post office to get her welfare payment and leave, only to be met by the man outside and brought back home.
The court heard she eventually successfully escaped him after he assaulted her while she was pregnant with her fourth child, getting a taxi to her parents’ house where she arrived with “nothing”, including the means to pay for the taxi.
She reported the man to gardaí and underwent a series of garda interviews over a number of months so investigators could get a full picture of the allegations.
When the man’s house was searched, the woman’s blood spatters were found on walls, floors, curtains and pictures frames, the court heard.
The woman said she had to battle the man in the Family Court and he was granted access to his two children.
She said she felt he used this access to continue his control over her and that there should be a link between the family and criminal courts in such cases. “He should not be allowed access to the children,” she said.
Mark Lynam SC, defending, said that after the miscarriage, the couple were abusing drugs and alcohol as a way of “numbing themselves” and that the man’s drug use spiralled.
He is now drug-free, the court heard.
He worked for a period of time as a scaffolder, but is now working part-time and caring for his father.
A number of references, including from a former partner and two subsequent partners were handed into court.
Sentencing the man, Judge Martin Nolan said the case involved serious and prolonged misbehaviour. “There is a pattern of physical violence, a pattern of verbal violence, a pattern of totally controlling her, a pattern of assaulting her and a pattern of humiliating and ridiculing her,” he said. “She will suffer long term effects.”
The judge said he had no doubt there were “dozens of assaults” inflicted on the woman.
Taking into account the maximum sentence for each offence is five years, he set a headline sentence of eight years.
He reduced this to five years, starting from yesterday’s date.