{"id":443938,"date":"2026-05-11T22:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443938\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T22:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T22:09:08","slug":"violent-abuser-who-raped-urinated-on-and-poured-bleach-over-partner-fails-in-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/443938\/","title":{"rendered":"Violent abuser who raped, urinated on, and poured bleach over partner fails in appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"

A violent abuser who raped his former partner and subjected her to \u201cextreme\u201d domestic violence, during which he urinated on her, poured bleach over her and flushed her head down a toilet, has failed to convince the Court of Appeal that his conviction should be overturned.<\/p>\n

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his ex-partner, subjected his victim to a prolonged barrage of degrading attacks, pleading guilty to 32 counts of assault causing harm.<\/p>\n

The offences included smashing the victim\u2019s head off a whiteboard, kicking her, flushing her head down a toilet, dragging her by the hair, spitting in her face and hitting her with an iPad.<\/p>\n

Following a trial in November 2021, a jury convicted the 53-year-old of 18 more counts of assault causing harm, making a threat to kill and two counts of rape.<\/p>\n

These offences included urinating and pouring bleach on the victim and punching her. He had pleaded not guilty to these offences.<\/p>\n

The assault offences all took place in Dublin on various dates between August 15th and September 5th, 2016, the day he raped the victim.<\/p>\n

‘Abusive, degrading and humiliating’ assaults<\/p>\n

In dismissing the man\u2019s appeal on Monday, Justice John Edwards noted the victim had been subjected to \u201cabusive, degrading and humiliating\u201d assaults.<\/p>\n

He said the woman had given evidence of her head smashing against a whiteboard with such force that the item broke and had described having her head flushed down the toilet on two occasions.<\/p>\n

She described how the appellant put her head down the toilet and flushed it and, when she began to come back up, he would push her head down again.<\/p>\n

The judge said the woman had also told how on one occasion she had been ordered to the bedroom to \u201cearn the roof over your head\u201d.<\/p>\n

When she delayed to finish ironing a child\u2019s school uniform, the appellant then threatened to brand her with the hot iron.<\/p>\n

The defendant\u2019s lawyers had argued that comments made in the prosecution\u2019s closing speech expressing personal opinion were \u201cunacceptable\u201d and could have had a \u201cdeleterious effect\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hugh Hartnett, representing the man, said prosecution counsel in her closing statement had told the jury that the complainant gave evidence in this case \u201cof a kind I say that was clear, was consistent, was true, it was credible and it was reliable\u201d.<\/p>\n

Counsel said the words \u201cI say\u201d were used on a number of occasions during the speech.<\/p>\n

He also contended that \u201cexcessive\u201d and \u201cunjustified\u201d interruptions by prosecution counsel during his cross-examination of the complainant created \u201can unfairness\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the State\u2019s legal team said it was wrong to \u201cdecontextualise\u201d and \u201ccherry pick\u201d remarks made to suggest they visited unfairness on the defendant.<\/p>\n

Anne-Marie Lawlor, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, submitted that it is \u201cperfectly acceptable\u201d for prosecution counsel to \u201ccontend for the truth of a complainant in a rape case\u201d.<\/p>\n

‘Wholly false’ premise<\/p>\n

Counsel, who prosecuted the case in the lower court, said where a \u201cwholly false\u201d premise was advanced in a trial, it was incumbent on the prosecution to bring it to the court\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

Delivering judgment on Monday, Justice Edwards said that while the prosecution closing speech did contain \u201crepeated inappropriate expressions of personal opinions\u201d about the reliability and credibility of the evidence given by the complainant, the court was satisfied that the trial judge was justified in not discharging the jury.<\/p>\n

Judge Edwards said prosecuting counsel \u201ccrossed the line\u201d between what was appropriate and inappropriate – due primarily to \u201cinfelicitous language\u201d in the phraseology of her closing submissions – but also noted there was no deliberate attempt on her part to \u201cinappropriately\u201d influence the jury.<\/p>\n

He said the degree of unfairness created was not such as to be \u201cirremediable\u201d by means of appropriate instructions given to the jury by the trial judge.<\/p>\n

Judge Edwards said the trial judge addressed the issue by emphasising to the jury immediately after the prosecution\u2019s closing and in advance of his charge that whatever counsel had said to them was \u201cnot evidence of any kind\u201d and addressed the issue again in his directions to the jury.<\/p>\n

Regarding the complaint of excessive interruptions, Mr Justice Edwards said the case in that regard had been \u201coverstated\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the court was satisfied that none of the interruptions were \u201cgratuitous\u201d or made inappropriately in an attempt to put defence counsel off his stride.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs far as we can see, many of them were in fact plainly justified,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Judge Edwards said the trial judge dealt with the issue \u201cimpeccably\u201d and his actions were sufficient to remediate any potential unfairness.<\/p>\n

\u201cA discharge of the jury in the circumstances of this case would not have been justified,\u201d he said. \u201cThe appeal is accordingly dismissed\u201d.<\/p>\n

In December 2022, Mr Justice Michael McGrath at the Central Criminal Court sentenced the man to 12 years with six months suspended.<\/p>\n

Sentence<\/p>\n

Passing sentence, the judge said that the rape offences took place against a background of extreme domestic violence.<\/p>\n

He said the sheer volume of the assaults spoke to the “terror and great violence” of the situation and noted there was a level of depravity in the offending.<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s sentencing hearing was told that in August 2016, the defendant became jealous after seeing photos of the woman on a work night out with male colleagues and began calling her a slut and a whore. She described how every day for the next three weeks he punched her, kicked her and dragged her by the hair around the house.<\/p>\n

In her victim impact statement, the woman said she was petrified when she finally left the family home with her children to go to a women\u2019s refuge and feared the man would find her and kill her.<\/p>\n

The woman said that she was in the \u201cmindset that it was all her fault\u201d and that \u201cthe children were scared and neither child wanted to be apart from me, even to just go to the toilet\u201d.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Man<\/p>\n

Ireland<\/p>\n

Man who sexually abused cousins he was babysitting jailed for nine years<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

When the children spent time with their father, he told them that he forgives the victim and wanted her back, the court heard.<\/p>\n

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can call the national 24-hour Rape Crisis Helpline at 1800-77 8888, access text service and webchat options at drcc.ie\/services\/helpline\/ or visit Rape Crisis Help.\u00a0In the case of an emergency, always dial 999\/112.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, you can contact Women\u2019s Aid (24-hour freephone helpline at 1800-341 900, email\u00a0helpline@womensaid.ie)\u00a0or\u00a0Men\u2019s Aid Ireland (confidential helpline at 01-554 3811, email hello@mensaid.ie) for support and information.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Safe Ireland also offers\u00a0a number of\u00a0local services and helplines at\u00a0safeireland.ie\/get-help\/where-to-find-help\/<\/a>.\u00a0In the case of an emergency, always dial 999\/112.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A violent abuser who raped his former partner and subjected her to \u201cextreme\u201d domestic violence, during which he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-443938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443938","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=443938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}