A distressed woman who alleged her husband hit her in the face, tried to strangle her, threatened several times to kill her and said she “killed the baby” after she suffered miscarriages, got a barring order against him.
She was “terrified” to go home after returning to Ireland in recent days from a trip to see her family and is staying with a friend, the woman told the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House, Dublin.
They married some years ago and she has experienced physical, sexual, financial and emotional abuse during the marriage, she said.
Earlier this month, just before she left their house to visit her home country, her husband hit her in the face with his hand, “put his hands around my throat and tried to strangle me, and grabbed my arm so hard I had significant bruising”, she told Judge Gerard Furlong.
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He has threatened to kill her many times and took her wages out of their bank account so she had no money for her trip home, she said. He forces her to have sex when she did not want to, saying he is her husband and has “the right”, she said.
She is “so scared constantly”; she had two miscarriages, and he told her she “killed the baby”, she said. He is emotionally abusive, calls her names, intimidates her and says she has to live on his terms, she added.
When the judge asked if she had gone to gardaí about the alleged assaults and threats, she said she had not.
The woman wept when the judge told her he would grant an interim barring order, returnable to next month. He told her, given the seriousness of the threats and assaults, she should make a formal complaint to gardaí.
In another of several ex parte (one side only represented) applications under the Domestic Violence Act on Friday, an elderly man got an interim barring order against his adult son over alleged threatening and intimidating behaviour.
The man was accompanied by a social worker when he came into court using a walking aid. He told Furlong his son, aged in his 40s, had forged his signature to get on to the tenancy of his father’s council house.
His son has a drug addiction and uses methadone, crack and other drugs, he said. His son demands and steals money from him, kicked in his bedroom door and threatened to push his head into his bedroom locker because he would not give him his phone so he could not call gardaí or other family members.
His son called him “mad”, told him he has dementia, his other children hate him and will put him in a nursing home, and hoped he (the father) would die soon, said the man.
His son breaks his property when he is high on drugs and takes his phone so he cannot ring gardaí for help.
On one occasion, after his son stole €100 from him, he contacted gardaí but was told they were not available and to come to the station. The man said he was on his own and unable to get to the station.
The man said he had a stroke some years ago and feels controlled and intimidated by his son’s behaviour. His son waits for him to fall asleep and then takes his phone and medication, he added.
His son spends all of his own social welfare allowance on the day he gets it to pay drug debts, he said. By the time his son gets home that day, he “hasn’t a penny”, sells supermarket vouchers on the street and goes to the food bank for his food.
In another case, a young African woman said she is the only carer since birth of a young child she had following a one-night stand with an Irish man.
Over the past six months, repeated behaviour by the man and members of his family has caused her distress, she said. The man has become increasingly intimidating and controlling and she was subject by him and his family to abusive, derogatory and racist remarks.
When she said the man told her, because he is Irish, the system will favour him, and she had “no leg to stand on”, the judge said: “I assure you, that is not true.”
The woman said she is scared for her own safety and that of her child and, as the child’s mother, feels disrespected by the man’s family. He has told her, unless she agrees to arrangements on his terms, he will not continue to be involved in the child’s life, she said.
When the judge asked whether the man was paying maintenance for the child, she replied that he told her he would not do anything unless the courts told him to.
The judge said he would grant a protection order and suggested the woman inquire about legal aid and a maintenance application.
