{"id":457108,"date":"2026-05-19T19:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457108\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T19:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T19:05:07","slug":"ex-garda-paul-moody-given-further-sentence-for-prolonged-coercive-control-of-second-woman-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/457108\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-garda Paul Moody given further sentence for \u2018prolonged\u2019 coercive control of second woman \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A woman who was harassed by a former garda<\/a> said she was \u201cmet with silence\u201d after making a complaint about his behaviour to the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Ombudsman Commission<\/a> (GSOC).<\/p>\n

Paul Moody (46) harassed his then partner, sent her abusive messages and threatened to send intimate images to her employer.<\/p>\n

Moody, formerly of St Raphael\u2019s Manor, Celbridge, Kildare<\/a>, pleaded guilty to harassment and coercive control.<\/p>\n

Dublin<\/a> Circuit Criminal Court heard this offending took place on dates between March 2016 and November 2017. A charge of demanding money with menace was also taken into consideration.<\/p>\n

Moody\u2019s offending continued while the woman was in hospital pregnant and after the birth of their child. Their relationship ended in early 2017. <\/p>\n

He was jailed in 2022 for three years and three months after pleading guilty to a charge of coercion. The court heard then that he engaged in a four-year campaign of harassment, threats, assaults and coercive control of Nicola Hanney, whom he was in relationship with after this woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone had listened in 2017, Nicola would have been spared\u201d, the woman said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Coercive control: Nicola Hanney tells of brutal campaign at the hands of former garda Paul MoodyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Moody joined the garda\u00ed in 2000 and served for 21 years before he was suspended.<\/p>\n

This injured party went to GSOC in December 2017 and made a statement in March 2018 after the investigation started, forwarding them a large amount of material.<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t receive any updates until October 2020 when GSOC told her Moody had been invited for interview the previous July, but did not attend as he was on work-related stress leave. <\/p>\n

Letters from GSOC relating to the injured party\u2019s complaint were found when Moody\u2019s home was searched in relation to the investigation into his conduct against Hanney.<\/p>\n

Det Sgt Maria Cassells of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI) said this was the first time the investigation became aware of the woman\u2019s allegations.<\/p>\n

In late 2022, the woman asked the NCBI to take over her complaint. In her victim impact statement, the woman said she was not free after the break-up and was \u201cmet with silence\u201d after making a complaint to GSOC.<\/p>\n

She said she felt \u201cprofound anger\u201d that Moody continued to serve \u2013 \u201cwearing the uniform of protection\u201d \u2013 but was an abuser behind closed doors.<\/p>\n

The woman said a welfare call from GSOC on the day Moody was sentenced in 2022 was like a \u201csledgehammer\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said the \u201cneglect\u201d of her complaint prolonged her trauma and the delays made it feel like his control had not ended.<\/p>\n

She said she had been \u201cprofoundly let down\u201d, but the NBCI \u201crestored some of my faith\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said Moody took \u201cfar more than years\u201d including \u201ctrust, peace and part of who I was\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said she knows others are living in similar situations and hoped \u201caccountability in this case sends a message that this will not be tolerated\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the statement read to the court by Fiona McGowan BL, prosecuting, the woman said she was \u201csubjected to a level of abuse which altered the course of my life\u201d during her relationship with Moody.<\/p>\n

She said she trusted Moody \u201ccompletely\u201d and he \u201cused the uniform to present himself as a good person\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe didn\u2019t need to hit me to cause harm\u201d, she said, adding the threats and psychological harm were relentless.<\/p>\n

She said Moody was \u201caware of what he was doing\u201d and suggested a safe word to stop things escalating which he ignored when she used it constantly.<\/p>\n

She described one night where Moody destroyed the nursery, then \u201cpaced with a knife like a man possessed\u201d.<\/p>\n

She said he taunted her, then tried to intimidate friends who came to help her, using his role as a garda.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey came in anyway. I believe that intervention saved us that day.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGowan told the court Moody can be named in reporting of the case, but the victim should not be identified.<\/p>\n

Imposing sentence, Judge Martin Nolan noted the offending was \u201cprolonged\u201d and \u201cextreme\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the harassment and abuse was \u201cextremely personal, insulting and very undermining\u201d.<\/p>\n

He notedthe court sentenced Moody in 2022 for similar offending. He said the court accepted that it must try to envision what global sentence would have been imposed if both cases had been dealt with together.<\/p>\n

The judge noted the guilty plea and that there were \u201cother small factors in mitigation\u201d.<\/p>\n

He handed Moody a six-year sentence with the final 15 months suspended on strict conditions, noting that the global sentence for all offending would have been in region of eight years.<\/p>\n

He also made an order that Moody should have no contact with the woman, her family or friends for 20 years and backdated the sentence to December 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman who was harassed by a former garda said she was \u201cmet with silence\u201d after making a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,615,198291,61,60,3770,74800,43],"class_list":["post-457108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-dublin","tag-garda-siochana-ombudsman-commission","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-kildare","tag-national-bureau-of-criminal-investigation","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457108","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=457108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}