A woman who was being followed by her ex-boyfriend, who put a tracker on her car, says she was horrified when she was asked that his defence team be able to access her counselling notes.<\/p>\n
The former partner, Se\u00e1n Fagan, aged 39, of Dunvale Crescent, Frankfield, Douglas, was sentenced in February to four years, with the last two years suspended, for harassing her for six months.<\/p>\n
A tracker was found on the exhaust pipe of her car after she became suspicious she was being followed \u2014 including once to a cafe to which she had rarely been.<\/p>\n
When garda\u00ed subsequently searched Fagan\u2019s home, they found two other tracking devices, as well as a tracker app on his phone.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the The Echo, the woman said the most difficult aspect of the justice process was being asked for access to her counselling notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I had been going to counselling eight or nine months at that point,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked first: \u2018How was that even allowed?\u2019 and said: \u2018Absolutely not, no way\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my understanding, it was so that the defence team could see them, but yet, because I was technically a witness in the State\u2019s case, I was entitled to no information.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI asked for information and wrote to the DPP myself and asked what information was I entitled to. I just got a response that no information could be given.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
She described being asked for access to the notes as \u201cviolating\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cCounselling was something I had chosen to do for myself, I had to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Approved<\/p>\n
In February, the Cabinet approved the Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, which will allow the use of counselling notes only where there is risk of an unfair trial. The bill has now been referred to the justice committee for scrutiny.<\/p>\n
If enacted, the decision on whether to allow the records as evidence will lie with judges after disclosure hearings to establish if the notes contain evidence relevant to the legal proceedings. The woman said that when she was asked a second time for access to her notes, she was told it could work in her favour by showing the effect the harassment had on her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was about a week or two of trying to weigh up the pros and cons and, in the end, I said: \u2018Fine\u2019, but it was purely because it would help me, and with a very heavy heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only imagine what it is like for people in abuse and sexual assault situations. For a couple of sessions after that, I feel I held back a little in the sessions, in case they came back to look for more.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of it, in my head, was that I didn\u2019t want him to know what he has done to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven at the point of the victim-impact statement, I didn\u2019t want to cry. I didn\u2019t want to show him that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who was being followed by her ex-boyfriend, who put a tracker on her car, says she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-405579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405579","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=405579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}