A woman has been granted a barring order against her partner after telling a court he “repeatedly punched me in the face, pulled clunks out of my hair, smashed my head against the wall and dragged me around by my hair”.
The woman, who secured a three-year barring order, said she thought her partner was “going to kill me” and kept “dropping out and seeing white lights” during the attack.
Dublin District Family Court was told on Wednesday that the couple had been in a relationship for a number of years and have two children together.
Accompanied to court by two gardaí, the woman said the abuse had started a few months ago and that when her partner drank “he would turn into a different person”.
READ MORE
“He would say mean things sometimes,” the woman said in a sworn statement. “He would call me a bitch.”
She said on one occasion they were sitting in a car when she confronted him about something and he “hit me a couple of times”.
“I asked him so many times to stop drinking but he never listened,” she said.
The woman said earlier this month her partner was drunk and their baby girl was crying which “bothered him and caused an argument”.
[ Man accused of slamming partner’s head into wall and throwing baby ‘across room’Opens in new window ]
“He hit the baby repeatedly with a pillow on her face. Then he grabbed her out of my arms and threw her across the mattress into the side of the wooden frame of the bed,” she told the court.
“He repeatedly punched me in the face, pulled clunks out of my hair, smashed my head against the wall, dragged me around by my hair. I thought he was going to kill me. I kept dropping out and seeing white lights.
“I was scared for my kids also because when he is drunk he doesn’t think about anyone. I had to run out of the window with my child and run back in for my other child.”
The woman said she and her daughter had to attend hospital for MRI scans.
“I know he loves the girls and if he wasn’t drunk he wouldn’t hurt them,” the woman said. “Maybe if he wasn’t drunk, he wouldn’t hurt me either.”
The woman’s partner, who was present in court for the hearing, said he was agreeable to a barring order and would comply with it.
Judge Gerard Furlong granted the woman a three-year order that bans the man from her home, from any further violence or threats of violence, and from watching or being near the home.
Judge Furlong noted that, as the couple are not married and have no court order in place for access to the children, the woman is in charge of access.
The judge advised the man he could bring an application before the courts seeking access to the children if he so wished.
