Mullingar<\/a> Circuit Criminal Court that the young woman felt compelled to have an abortion after he threatened to \u201ckick the child out of you\u201d.<\/p>\nShe thought they were in love, but afterwards, she could see he was manipulating and using her. In her victim impact statement, she depicted the relationship, which began when she was in her teens, as a nightmare and \u201cmental torture\u201d.<\/p>\n
For five years, he controlled her movements and who she spoke to during a \u201cphysically, emotionally and mentally abusive\u201d relationship, the court heard.<\/p>\n
She stated she was no longer under his control and was now a different person with the courage to speak up. However, she has PTSD, suffered long-term physical injuries and has been left with trust issues.<\/p>\n
She was convinced he would kill her in the repeated attacks; during one, he made a death threat that \u201cshe would be leaving in a body bag\u201d if she spoke out. <\/p>\n
Judge Johnson heard she remains in fear of the day he will be released. He has been in custody on remand since last year; the sentence hearing resumes next week.<\/p>\n
The man, in his mid-20s and not named to protect the complainant\u2019s anonymity, pleaded guilty to two offences: assault causing harm and publishing intimate images of her while staying in a hotel in February 2025.<\/p>\n
The court had heard that he had been in the throes of heavy cocaine and ketamine addiction.<\/p>\n
He entered guilty pleas to nine more charges on a second indictment. They involved five incidents of assault causing harm to the same complainant, mainly at his home address, causing criminal damage to her phone, threatening to kill or cause her serious harm, on dates in 2022, 2023, 2024 and in early 2025.<\/p>\n
He also split her head twice in one assault, requiring 16 staples, and left her with facial bruising.<\/p>\n
The accused has no prior convictions and showed no emotion as the evidence was heard in court.<\/p>\n
Det Garda Darren Kerins agreed with Cathal \u00d3 Braon\u00e1in BL, instructed by State solicitor Matt Shaw, that the woman reported that the accused would not let her meet anyone and verbally abused her if she gained weight and would \u201cblow up and attack her\u201d while on drugs. <\/p>\n
The court heard he constantly checked her phones and regularly smashed them; she had to delete the call logs so he would not know she was contacting family or friends, and she was terrified for her life.<\/p>\n
The court heard the accused had a debt and was in danger and had to leave home, spending a few days in a hotel room in D\u00fan Laoghaire, Dublin.<\/p>\n
The man demanded she give him her social welfare payment for drugs, and he was delivered tablets, ketamine and cocaine. He began pacing up and down, dribbling.<\/p>\n
When she fell asleep, he looked at her phone and saw that several males had liked her Instagram stories. She woke and felt him hitting her legs and shoulders. <\/p>\n
The court that he grabbed her by her ponytail and flung her down, punching her and smashing a hair dryer into her head and face as she pleaded for her life.<\/p>\n
He then ripped the top of a wooden coffee table and smashed it into her face three or four times.Her nose cracked and she bled heavily.<\/p>\n
He told her he didn\u2019t care if he killed her because he would be happier going to prison and getting drugs there.<\/p>\n
She had a few pictures and videos of herself naked, and after she had given herself a tanning treatment. The court heard the accused posted them to her social media accounts and sent them by WhatsApp to her parents, a 13-year-old relative and a grandmother.<\/p>\n
She was dizzy and crawling on the floor, but he struck her again, grabbed her ponytail and dragged her while hitting her. <\/p>\n
He disconnected the hotel room phone and her mobile phone.. The attacks continued throughout the night, and she blacked out, but he later told her to clean herself up.<\/p>\n
Det Garda Kerins said the accused during his interview showed \u201cno remorse, no co-operation, no anything\u201d and tried to claim bloodstains in the badly damaged hotel room were because \u201cshe must have been on her period\u201d.<\/p>\n
He outlined a series of violent incidents over the previous four years.<\/p>\n
Once, she had to jump out a window when garda\u00ed turned up, and another time, he chased and sprayed her with bleach and kicked her face and hands. He slammed a door into her face because she did not answer him fast enough.<\/p>\n
She got a job and he drove her to work, but would sit in his car outside for her entire shift, watching her. <\/p>\n
A few years into the relationship, she became pregnant, but he told her he did not want the baby because he had so many drug debts. He demanded she have an abortion, and she felt she had to due to these threats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man showed \u201czero remorse\u201d after sharing intimate images of his ex-girlfriend on social media and with her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":257204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,61,60,57,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-257203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-mullingar","12":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257203","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=257203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}