A former Fianna F\u00e1il councillor, who admitted being \u201ca kind of stalker\u201d while harassing a young waitress at a restaurant where she worked in Cork city, has been given a nine-month suspended sentence.<\/p>\n
Joseph O\u2019Donovan (50), formerly Gary O\u2019Flynn, who served on Cork City Council from 2003 to 2008, previously pleaded guilty to harassing the 25-year-old woman in Cork on three separate occasions in July and August 2022.<\/p>\n
At Cork District Court on Thursday, Judge Mary Dorgan said she was putting numerous conditions on the suspension of the sentence, including that he is to have no contact with the young woman who was harassed.<\/p>\n
The judge said a probation report on O\u2019Donovan said he was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum and needing \u201call the help that he can get\u201d. <\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan flagged down the young waitress and kissed her on the hand, telling her he was \u2018the nicest and prettiest girl he had ever seen\u2019<\/p>\n
Judge Dorgan previously noted the probation report assessed O\u2019Donovan as at a low risk of reoffending. However, she said the woman\u2019s victim impact statement made for \u201ccompelling reading\u201d, and he had told his victim that he was \u201ckind of a stalker\u201d.<\/p>\n
The judge observed alcohol exacerbated his behaviour to an unacceptable level that led to the young woman becoming deeply traumatised.<\/p>\n
The court previously heard O\u2019Donovan went to a restaurant in Cork city centre on July 30th, 2022, where, drinking wine, he flagged down the young waitress and kissed her on the hand, telling her he was \u201cthe nicest and prettiest girl he had ever seen\u201d.<\/p>\n
He visited the restaurant again two days later and asked to be served by the same woman. He again took her hand, kissed it and breathed into her ear. He said: \u201cMeet me outside for a tip and I better get your phone number for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan went outside and then stared in, causing the waitress to tell him he wasn\u2019t welcome, and he should leave. O\u2019Donovan followed her back inside and asked to see her again. When he was asked to leave by management, he threw \u20ac50 at the waitress.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan returned to the restaurant on August 6th, 2022, around 10.30pm when the premises was about to close. The waitress again told him to leave, and O\u2019Donovan said he was sorry but he could not help it, the court heard.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Donovan, with an address of Melvindale House, Coolowen, Blarney, Co Cork, was later arrested. He told garda\u00ed the woman was very pretty and that he kissed her hand in a manner seen in movies as a gesture of politeness and courtesy.<\/p>\n
In her victim impact statement, the woman said she had to wait three years to have her day in court and, during that time, she \u201cnever stopped\u201d looking over her shoulder when she heard steps behind her.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis man looked me in the eye and called himself a creep. This man looked me in the eyes and called himself a stalker. Then laughed about it \u2014 laughter with a laugh that still makes me recoil in fear to this day,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat moment has never left me. Because in that moment I realised I wasn\u2019t dealing with someone who didn\u2019t understand boundaries, but someone who chose to violate them,\u201d she said, adding that O\u2019Donovan felt his desire outweighed her right to say \u201cNo\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Fianna F\u00e1il councillor, who admitted being \u201ca kind of stalker\u201d while harassing a young waitress at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[46,61,60,43],"class_list":["post-175814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-cork","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}