A former soldier who harassed a vulnerable woman who had just emerged from an abusive marriage has been given a three-year suspended sentence.
The 60-year-old Dublin man was acting like a “lovesick teenager”, according to his defence counsel, when he repeatedly followed the woman to her home, the local shops and park and her children’s schools among other places, during a five-month period in 2021.
The woman was in a “very vulnerable position” at the time, having ended a 20-year marriage during which she was repeatedly raped, the Central Criminal Court heard. In her victim impact statement she told the court that having to deal with criminal behaviour from more than one man was more than she could bear.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the woman, pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to one count of harassing her between February and July 2021. It is an offence that carries a maximum sentence of seven years.
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Sentencing him on Monday, Judge Eileen Creedon said the man’s behaviour was “persistent, threatening and frightening”. She said he would have had some awareness of the woman’s past, and she was at times physically and emotionally upset in his presence but “this did not deter him”.
She set a headline sentence of five years before taking mitigating factors into account, including the man’s guilty plea which avoided the woman having to go through the trial process, his good work history and the fact he had not reoffended or gone near the woman in five years. He has no previous convictions.
She sentenced him to three years’ imprisonment but suspended it on a number of conditions. She ordered him to stay away from the woman for a period of five years.
The court heard that after the woman ended her marriage in 2018, she tried to rebuild her life and find a new home for herself and her children. Her husband was jailed for 9½ years in 2023 for five counts of raping her on dates between 2006 and 2018.
She met the defendant in December 2019 and they began a relationship. The man told her his marriage had ended, although he was still living with his wife.
He helped her to secure a lease on a house near him in 2020 and later that year, he left his family home and moved in with his sister. He became increasingly demanding of the woman, calling her and crying, and insisting she visit him on Christmas Day.
They started arguing a lot and in January 2021 the woman said she wanted a break.
The man started inundating the woman with messages declaring his love for her, driving by her house and parking nearby. He regularly followed her when she was grocery shopping in a local supermarket.
On one occasion he followed her when she was dropping the children to their father and started banging on her car, saying that life was not worth living without her.
There was a brief rapprochement for a period, but during this time the man would get upset if the woman left her house without telling him so that they could meet up.
He again started bombarding her with texts and threatened suicide.
Over the following months, the man continued to follow the women to various places including her children’s school and the post office.
In her victim impact statement, which she gave from behind a screen so she did not have to see the defendant in the dock, the woman said the fact the man was a former soldier had made her feel safe around him, especially given her past experience.
As a result of the harassment, she said she no longer felt safe at night and felt a deep sense of grief. She said she had a constant fear of being watched and had panic attacks. “I’m exhausted from living in fear,” she said. “It is no way to live.”
Defence barrister Alexander White said the man was acting out of character at the time of his offending and was behaving like a “lovesick teenager”. He said he was going through a difficult period with the Covid lockdown and breakdown of his marriage. He is now in a new relationship.
He wished to apologise to the woman, the court heard.
