A woman who went with her young children to a refuge after her partner allegedly became violent, put his hand to her throat and broke her foot by throwing a heavy object on it has secured a protection order.
The distressed woman said the children were crying and saying: “Leave Mammy alone.”
She locked herself and the children into a room and neighbours called gardaí, who came and escorted her and the children out of the apartment to a refuge.
Her partner had resumed drinking and taking drugs. He assumed it was her who contacted gardaí and called her “a rat”, she said.
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The man owns the apartment where she and the children have lived for several years, the emergency domestic violence court at Dublin’s Dolphin House heard.
Judge Gerard Furlong said the woman could not seek a barring order because the apartment is in the man’s name. However, the court would grant a protection order on an ex-parte (one side only represented) basis, restraining him using, or threatening, violence towards her and the children.
When the judge said the man could communicate with her only concerning access to the children, the woman said Tusla had said he could not have access, it was “too dangerous”.
In another of about 20 ex-parte applications on Friday, a woman who alleged she was “preyed on” by a man when she was homeless got a protection order against him.
After she got her own accommodation, he moved in and was violent to her, breaking her ribs, foot and thumb and inflicting “countless black eyes” and bruising, she said.
He tried to kill her and to get her to kill herself, “put me down a lot” and turned her friends and family against her, she said. He put a camera in her house, stalked her and tracked her phone and while he is now out of her house, she fears for her safety, she said.
A young man separately got a protection order against his ex-partner over her alleged conduct towards him since their relationship of a few months ended. He alleged she has sent him more than 1,000 messages, follows him from his work, and had ignored warnings from gardaí and a ‘cease and desist’ letter from his solicitor.
She has claimed to have qualifications in surveillance and tactical training and he is “in constant fear” for the safety of himself and his current partner, he said.
A woman who said she wants a separation from her husband but is fearful how he will respond sought a protection order to protect her and their young children during the separation process.
She said she has been subject for years to coercive control, psychological and financial abuse by him. He is “very unpredictable” and switches between calm and aggressive behaviour towards her and the children, she said.
He often lost his temper in front of their children and she had come home to them crying and asking her not to leave them alone with him, she said. He is financially abusive, threatening not to pay bills unless she is intimate with him, and had taken her credit card and emptied all their Revolut accounts, she said. He isolated her from her family and friends in the past and is again doing so, insisting she “put him first”, she said.
“I’m scared to stay with him, I can’t let him frighten the kids any more.”
The judge said that while he initially thought fear of her husband’s possible response to her separation plan could not be a basis for a protection order, she had provided enough evidence of his actual behaviour for an order to be granted.
A young woman got a protection order against her father whom she alleged is an alcoholic who is verbally and financially abusive. He throws objects at her and her cats and shouts “vulgar sexual profanities” at her in front of her younger sister including: “You’re getting raped” and “I will f*** you hard”, she alleged. She did not know “if he meant that in a sexual way”, she told the judge. There were many examples of such “aggressive torture” over the years, she added.
