A distraught woman who said her ex-partner beat her so badly she bled from the ears and had to undergo brain scans in hospital has obtained a protection order.
The young woman told the court she and her three children have been in homeless accommodation for five years, and the man has pursued her to different shelters, sometimes turning up outside with baseball bats and hammers.
This had led to her and the children being put out of their accommodation a number of times, she told Judge Gerard Furlong at the emergency domestic violence court in Dolphin House, Dublin, on Friday.
The judge told the woman he would grant her ex-parte (one side only represented) application for a protection order for the maximum five years.
When he told the woman he hoped she would get “a Christmas present” of more stable accommodation, she sobbed as she thanked him.
The judge heard the man is the father of the woman’s youngest child.
He was physically and emotionally abusive to her during their two-year relationship, and “does not want to know his child”, she said.
In addition to turning up at their homeless accommodation, he threatened her via phone calls and messages and on social media platforms, she said.
After a recent incident, she was taken to hospital and underwent brain scans because he had beaten her so badly her ears were bleeding, she added. He had punched, kicked and bitten her, and tried to pull out her hair, she said.
This happened while he kept her “hostage” over a weekend when he was “coke-fuelled”.
She fled with her youngest child after he fell asleep, and was taken to hospital after banging on the door of a nearby house. Her older children were with their father at the time.
When she previously got a protection order, he phoned her and threatened her and the children as soon as he received it, she told the court. “He said he was going to get me and the kids and is coming for me and mine.” She had contacted gardaí and he was arrested, but she was not sure what was happening about that.
The judge told her that incident could potentially lead to criminal charges.
In another case, a man got protection orders ex parte against his wife and adult son after alleging both were abusive and threatening towards him at home.
The property is his own family home, and his wife has been looking for a separation since late last year. She is putting him under pressure to sell it, the man said.
She obtained a protection order ex parte against him just a day earlier, the judge noted.
In a separate case, Judge Gerard Furlong granted a woman a protection order against her former partner whose behaviour, she said, was aggressive and unpredictable and was traumatising their 10-year-old daughter. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill
In a separate case, a woman obtained a protection order against her former partner.
She said his behaviour is aggressive and unpredictable and is traumatising their 10-year-old daughter. The child refuses to see him, he has not seen her in 2½ years and an access summons was served in September, the woman said.
She said she previously got a protection order against the man but, when she gave him the order, he spat in her face and smashed the wing mirrors of her car.
She had not pursued that breach and the matter was struck out, she said. That was because she did not want conflict and “felt bad” when his father pleaded with her not to go ahead because his son would have a criminal record.
In another case, a woman said her husband told her, weeks after he came from their native African country to join her and their three children here under a family reunification procedure, he had divorced her under Islamic procedure but has refused to give her official proof of divorce.
The woman, who is in homeless accommodation with the children, said he keeps threatening her that if she fails to renew his residence permit he will take the children and disappear with them and she will never see them again.
She is very worried for her own and the children’s safety, she said. Her husband had admitted he had remained married to her only so he could come to Ireland.
The judge said he would grant a protection order covering the woman and the children.