Coercive control: Nicola Hanney tells of brutal campaign at the hands of former garda Paul Moody

Major legal and system changes are needed to provide greater protection for the victims of coercive control, a survivor of domestic abuse has said.

Nicola Hanney was speaking after the airing of a documentary charting the abuse she suffered at the hands of her former partner and father of her child, Garda Paul Moody.

In July 2022, Moody was sentenced to three years and three months in jail for the offence of coercive control.

Ms Hanney was a key witness in the prosecution’s case against her abuser. At the time, she was living with terminal cancer.

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In Taking Back Control, the documentary shown on RTÉ on Monday evening, she abandons her anonymity in order to shed light on her harrowing experience of coercive control and domestic abuse over four years.

[ Prosecutors accepted Paul Moody plea deal due to concerns about victim’s health ]

Moody carried out a campaign of harassment and threats of his partner, whom he met online in 2017.

He once told her the only reason he had visited her while in hospital was to “watch you bleed to death”.

Moody sent over 30,000 messages, described in court last year as threatening, vile and abusive. In one 14-hour period in July 2018, Moody sent her 652 messages, amounting to one message every 90 seconds.

In one message he described her as being “riddled with cancer”. in another, while she was on holiday without him, he said he hoped she would “get raped and bleed”.

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In another, after they had a row while on holiday together, he messaged her the following morning and said she was “flaunting your body around the pool”, calling her a “dirtbox” and a “scumbag”.

Moody threatened to stick a knife in her in one voice message. He took secret photos of her naked and threatened to post them online.

The office of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) accepted a plea from Moody (42) to a single count of coercive control which carries a maximum of five years in prison in July 2022. Moody had originally been charged with 35 offences relating to a four-year campaign of abuse directed Nicola, who is terminally ill. These included assault, criminal damage, harassment and threats to kill.

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Moody, with an address in Kildare, originally planned to go to trial on the offences. But prosecutors feared the victim would not be well enough to attend court by the time the case took place.

Speaking after the programme, Ms Hanney said “a lot of things have to change” for people in abusive relationships.

“Not enough support (is provided) to give people to confidence to leave,” she said on Upfront with Katie Hannon. “There’s a law for women and for men but none for children. They have no voice.”

People need to be aware of early “red flags” of coercive control and potentially unsafe relationships, she said, such as talking negatively about previous partners.

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