A 21-year-old man has been jailed for six years for attacking two women, including his pregnant partner, in their homes a year apart.
He beat his first victim, who owed him a drug debt, over her head with an iron. He was on bail for that offence when he strangled his pregnant partner.
His barrister said that violence had become “normalised in his psychology” due to the violence he had endured from a young age.
Harry Bamidele, with an address at Tor an Rí Lane, Clondalkin in Dublin, was before Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Thursday where he was charged with assault causing harm to each woman.
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He pleaded guilty to the assault on the first woman at her home in Dublin on September 19th, 2024 and to assaulting the second woman at her home in the city on October 6th, 2025.
The court heard that Bamidele was his first victim’s drug dealer, and that he used to meet her at a post office every week for her to pay her debts.
On the occasion of the assault she woke at about 9am to find him in her home, holding a clothes iron to her head.
She told gardaí he hit her over the head with the iron about 20 times in 30 seconds. She said that there was blood everywhere.
“Look what you made me do,” he said to her after the attack. “It’s not about the money. It’s the principle.”
He was arrested and charged, and was on bail by the time he attacked his pregnant partner on October 6th, 2025.
Garda Mark Hughes explained that she and Bamidele had a verbal altercation in her bedroom. She locked herself in the bathroom, but he broke the door in.
“He put his two hands around my neck and started to strangle me,” she told gardaí.
She said it lasted two to three minutes, during which time she could not breathe and was in complete fear.
She told gardaí that she had serious concerns for her and her baby’s health following the attack.
She called the Garda a week later when he again arrived at her home and threatened her to such an extent that she was put in fear.
When Hughes arrived, he found Bamidele with a scissors in his hand and his partner “visibly petrified”. He separated them and arrested the accused.
Under cross-examination by defending barrister David Fleming, Hughes agreed that the accused said he had been snorting tablets that day.
He had 14 previous convictions.
Fleming told Judge Elma Sheahan that his client had asked him to apologise to his first victim. He had already had an opportunity to offer an apology to his former partner, who had accepted it, and had accepted that he was out of control, he said.
Counsel explained that his client was the second-youngest of five children and that his father had left the family.
Another brother, who was 12 years older than him, became his father figure, but disciplined with violence.
He later turned to cocaine and was taking 2.5g a day and selling it by the age of 16. He then began taking “benzos and whatever tablets he could get his hands on”.
Counsel said that he was regularly beaten and terrorised when he could not pay for his drugs.
Counsel handed in a psychological report, which said that Bamidele had poor mental health, was psychologically vulnerable and had poor coping mechanisms.
He was sentenced to seven years and eight months with the final 20 months suspended.
