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Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Wife and ex-partner of ‘controlling and dangerous man' secure protection orders
A man's wife and his ex-partner have been granted protection orders against him within days of each other. The ex-partner, who broke up with him more than three years ago, told the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House, Dublin on Friday that the man knows his wife recently contacted her and he had said he was going to ruin their lives. He has contacted his ex-partner via social media and she said she feels unsafe. She made a statement to gardaí after learning that during their relationship, he had recorded a video on his phone of him laughing after her then two-year-old child was hurt when he braked hard in his car after deliberately not putting on the child's seat belt. The man has retained private images of the woman on his phone and a letter from her to her daughter, who is not his child, she said. READ MORE 'It's like an obsession,' the woman told the court. The ex-partner said she had 'healed' after her relatively short relationship with the man, is in another relationship for some time, recently had a baby and wanted nothing to do with him. The man's wife, who obtained a protection order against him days earlier, returned to the court on Friday to support her husband's ex-partner in her application. Judge Shalom Binchy said that while it was 'unusual', she would hear evidence from the wife in the context of the man's ex-partner's application. The wife came into court and said her husband is a 'narcissist' and a 'very controlling and dangerous man'. 'He said he is going to ruin my life and hers [the ex-partner's],' she said. The man had leaked private images of his wife on to social media and she believed he would do the same concerning the other woman. The man had shown his wife the video of his ex-partner's daughter in his car after he deliberately did not put on the child's seat belt, she said. The wife said he referred to the child in a 'very nasty' way and had shown her another video of the child falling off a slide. After her evidence, the wife left court and the judge told his ex-partner she would grant a protection order. In another case, a mother was granted a barring order against her mentally ill son. Aged in his 30s, he was diagnosed with a serious mental illness nine years ago but has no insight and is not compliant with medication or outpatient appointments, she said. He was admitted as an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Acts four times in the past 20 months. Her son is very angry and a recluse with no friends, and his behaviour is getting more difficult and erratic, she said. The woman said he had come into her home with a crowbar and a look in his eyes that 'terrified' her. She always keeps her car keys on her body and fled the house and drove away. On another occasion, he locked her and a friend out of the house overnight by using a rope. He was discharged from a mental health unit a few days ago with no money and no clothes and she does not know where he is, the distressed woman said. He was discharged despite a Garda detective contacting the unit, saying her son is very vulnerable and in potential danger of being 'radicalised'. She keeps hoping someone in a hospital 'will acknowledge he needs long-term support and help'. Granting a 12-month barring order, the judge said: 'It sounds like he has been very much let down by the mental health services, and neither of you should have been left in this situation and have to come to court.' When the woman asked could the court do anything about the mental health issues raised, the judge said she had no power to do so.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
Woman tortured over false drug accusation will never forgive ‘sick' men who attacked her
A woman who was tortured and falsely imprisoned in a Dublin flat over a false accusation about missing drugs has told a court she will never forgive the 'sick human beings' for what they did to her. During a three-hour period in September last year, in which she was put through 'unimaginable trauma', the woman was beaten around the head and body with metal poles. She was burned with a makeshift blow torch and a heated hammer head, cut with a knife, kicked and punched, had her hair cut off and was threatened with rape, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. The men took running jumps at her during the assault in a one-bedroom flat at Henrietta House, Dublin 7 , threatened to make her drink ammonia and also threatened to rape her teenage daughter. She was terrified throughout and thought she was going to die, Caroline Cummings BL, prosecuting, told the sentence hearing on Friday. READ MORE The assault ended only when gardaí entered the flat with a search warrant, the court heard. All of the men, who have between one and 124 previous convictions, were on bail at the time of the offence. In text messages read out in court, one of the men boasted to a friend during the incident that they had a 'hostage' and had 'cut her up', to which this unidentified man replied: 'quality'. Phone video footage taken inside the flat that day was also played in court, which showed the woman bloodied and distressed and a hammer being heated up on a hob. The woman was left with a broken eye socket, broken cheekbone, broken nasal bone, broken elbow, burns, dislocated teeth, bruising and lacerations across her head and scalp, among other injuries. She required skin grafts, staples to her scalp, and later had surgery to remove a disc in her back, the court heard. She spent three weeks in hospital in the immediate aftermath of the assault. Five of the eight men present that day entered guilty pleas, while another man and a juvenile are still before the courts. The eighth person is not before the courts. Mark Keogh (33), Mark McMahon (55) and Braxton Rice (21), all of Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, Dublin 7, along with Sean Conroy (21) of Sillogue Road, Ballymun and Kian Walshe (22) of Constitution Hill, Dublin 7, all pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and assault causing harm to the woman at Henrietta House on September 26th, 2024. [ Man jailed for role in murder of David Douglas in Dublin shoe shop appeals conviction Opens in new window ] A number of other counts against each man relating to the production of articles in the course of an offence were taken into consideration. In her victim impact statement, which was read out by the investigating officer, the 38-year-old woman said she was 'petrified' in the flat. 'If police didn't come in through that door that day, I was sure I was dead,' she said, describing the men as 'animals'. 'I was beaten, stabbed and burnt – tortured to confess to something I knew nothing about,' she said. 'The smell of my skin burning, I will never get that smell out of my mind again,' she said, adding that she was 'completely helpless' and outnumbered by the eight men. 'I never knew humanity could be so cruel,' she said. Det Garda Peter Guyett told the court that at the time of the incident, the woman and her then partner were staying with one of the men whose case is still before the court. While there, the woman became aware this man was holding drugs in his house. [ Kinahan crime boss ordered to pay back £1 million or face more jail time Opens in new window ] On the day in question, this man and another person approached the woman in the house and told her: 'Come on, we've to go,' before she was put into an Audi containing two other men and driven to Henrietta House. There were eight men in the flat, and a 'baby-faced' man – who later emerged to be Rice – started interrogating her about a €90,000 batch of cocaine that had gone missing from the home she was staying in. An older man, later identified as McMahon, whose flat it was, held a hatchet up to her face while his son Keogh, referred to in court as 'Sparky', hit her across the head with a pole. Conroy kicked her face. 'Every person there hit her,' Ms Cummings said. 'Not one of them didn't get involved.' They cut her hair, which the woman later described as 'the ultimate humiliation'. The man whose house she was staying in was told by the others to get involved, and he cut her legs with some sort of blade. They used an aerosol can and a lighter as a makeshift blowtorch to burn her. The woman thought the incident lasted for an hour-and-a-half, but CCTV footage showed she was in the flat for three hours before gardaí entered, the court heard. The woman was present in court for the sentence hearing; in the afternoon, Ms Cummings informed Judge Pauline Codd that it was suspected that someone in court had been recording her. A device had been seized, the court heard. Judge Codd thanked the woman for attending court. 'She has been through unimaginable trauma,' she said. The court heard McMahon has 27 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession, burglary, robbery and malicious damage. Keogh has 124 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession, possession of knives, assault causing harm and escaping custody. Conroy has 89 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession, burglary and possession of knives. Rice has 12 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession. Walshe has one previous conviction. The maximum sentences for false imprisonment and assault causing harm are life and 10 years respectively. Judge Codd adjourned the case to next Wednesday, when defence counsel will give their pleas of mitigation.
BreakingNews.ie
4 days ago
- BreakingNews.ie
Woman was tortured over false missing drugs accusation in Dublin flat, court hears
A woman who was tortured and falsely imprisoned in a Dublin flat over a false accusation about missing drugs has told a court she will never forgive the 'sick human beings' for what they did to her. During a three hour period in September last year in which she was put through 'unimaginable trauma', the woman was beaten to the head and body with metal poles. Advertisement She was burned with a makeshift blow torch and a heated hammer head, cut with a knife, kicked and punched, had her hair cut off and was threatened with rape, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard. The men took running jumps at her during the assault in a one bedroom flat at Henrietta House, Dublin 7, threatened to make her drink ammonia and also threatened to rape her teenage daughter. She was terrified throughout and thought she was going to die, Caroline Cummings BL, prosecuting, told the sentence hearing on Friday. The assault only ended when gardaí entered the flat with a search warrant, the court heard. All of the men, who have between one and 124 previous convictions respectively, were on bail at the time of the offence. Advertisement In text messages read out in court, one of the men boasted to a friend during the incident that they had a 'hostage' and had 'cut her up', to which this unidentified man replied: 'quality'. Phone video footage taken inside the flat that day was also played in court, which showed the woman bloodied and distressed and a hammer being heated up on a hob. The woman was left with a broken eye socket, broken cheekbone, broken nasal bone, broken elbow, burns, dislocated teeth, bruising and lacerations across her head and scalp among other injuries. She required skin grafts, staples to her scalp and later had surgery to remove a disc in her back, the court heard. She spent three weeks in hospital in the immediate aftermath of the assault. Advertisement Five of the eight men present that day entered guilty pleas, while another man and a juvenile are still before the courts. The eighth person is not before the courts. Mark Keogh (33), Mark McMahon (55) and Braxton Rice (21), all of Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, Dublin 7, along with Sean Conroy (21) of Sillogue Road, Ballymun and Kian Walshe (22) of Constitution Hill, Dublin 7, all pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and assault causing harm to the woman at Henrietta House on September 26th, 2024. A number of other counts against each man relating to the production of articles in the course of an offence, were taken into consideration. In her victim impact statement, which was read out by the investigating officer, the 38-year-old woman said she was 'petrified' in the flat. 'If police didn't come in through that door that day, I was sure I was dead,' she said, describing the men as 'animals'. Advertisement 'I was beaten, stabbed and burnt – tortured to confess to something I knew nothing about,' she said. '...The smell of my skin burning, I will never get that smell out of my mind again,' she said, adding that she was 'completely helpless' and outnumbered by the eight men. 'I never knew humanity could be so cruel,' she said. Detective Garda Peter Guyett told the court that at the time of the incident, the woman and her then partner were staying with one of the men whose case is still before the court. While there, the woman became aware this man was holding drugs in his house. Advertisement On the day in question, this man and another person approached the woman in the house and told her: 'Come on, we've to go', before she was put into an Audi containing two other men and driven to Henrietta House. There were eight men in the flat and a 'baby-faced' man, who later emerged to be Rice, started interrogating her about a €90k batch of cocaine that had gone missing from the home she was staying in. Rice accessed the woman's Facebook account and demanded her mother's address, threatening to rape her teenage daughter who was staying there. He started hitting her across the head with a metal pole before he 'lost control' and started hitting her all over her body, the court heard. Hatchet An older man, later identified as McMahon, whose flat it was, held a hatchet up to her face while his son Keogh, referred to in court as 'Sparky' hit her across the head with a pole. Conroy kicked her face. 'Every person there hit her,' Ms Cummings said. 'Not one of them didn't get involved'. She said the men would walk into the next room so they had more space in order to run at the woman with speed while assaulting her. While she was being hit and kicked, Braxton heated the head of a hammer up and pressed it 'over and over' against her bare legs, the court heard. They cut her hair which the woman later described as 'the ultimate humiliation'. At one point, she heard the men on the phone to their 'boss' who said: 'Strip her off and get her into bed and bugger her.' They didn't do this but they told her a 'black man' was coming to rape her, the court heard. The man whose house she was staying in was told by the others to get involved and he cut her legs with some sort of blade. They used an aerosol can and a lighter as a makeshift blowtorch to burn her. The woman thought the incident lasted for an hour and a half, but CCTV footage showed she was in the flat for three hours before gardaí entered, the court heard. The woman was visibly bloodied and bruised, extremely distressed and there was blood on the chair under her as well as clumps of hair scattered around the flat. The men tried to pretend that she had been injured outside by a third party and they were helping to clean her up, but the woman was taken to another room where she disclosed that they had been torturing her. 'I was being beaten to a pulp by all these men for absolutely no reason,' she later told gardaí. 'They used steel poles, hammers, makeshift blowtorches and lighters to torture me.' The woman was present in court for the sentence hearing and after lunch, Ms Cummings informed Judge Pauline Codd that it was suspected that someone in court had been recording her. A device had been seized, the court heard. Prosecution counsel said people had been staring at the woman and moving closer to her in court. Judge Codd ordered that there be no recording in court, reminding those in the public gallery that this is in contempt of court. In her victim impact statement, the woman said that the men had tortured her family information out of her and the threat of rape against her daughter had destroyed her. She said she now isolates herself from her family so they will never be in danger again. She said the torture she endured was the longest three hours of her life and she continues to suffer from flashbacks, constant headaches, pain all over her body 'from all the hits I took that day'. She is still waiting on a psychological appointment, she said. 'What happened to me is something I will never forget,' she said. 'I will never forgive those sick human beings for what they have done to me.' Concluding her statement, she said: 'To the people who did this to me: I hope you can sleep well at night, because I most certainly can't.' Judge Codd thanked the woman for attending court. 'She has been through unimaginable trauma,' she said. The court heard McMahon has 27 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession, burglary, robbery and malicious damage. Keogh has 124 previous convictions, including drug dealing and possession, possession of knives, assault causing harm and escaping custody. Conroy has 89 previous convictions including drug dealing and possession, burglary and possession of knives. Rice has 12 previous convictions including drug dealing and possession while Walshe has one previous conviction. The maximum sentences for false imprisonment and assault causing harm are life and 10 years respectively. Judge Codd adjourned the case to next Wednesday, when defence counsel will give their pleas of mitigation.
Irish Times
20-07-2025
- Irish Times
Remembering Ballinspittle and the moving statue
Queuing for flat whites and skinny lattes being served through a street-facing hatch from a 'boutique' bakery in the small village of Ballinspittle, customers were there on a recent Saturday morning for their coffee fix rather than a gawk at the statue of Our Lady. Mention the 'moving statue' in the village and folk smile benignly but don't seem interested in talking about the phenomenon. Forty years ago, on July 22, 1985, a 17-year-old local girl, who was in the company of family members and a few neighbours, said she saw the statue of Our Lady, in the grotto just outside Ballinspittle at Sheehy's Cross, move. It was shortly after 10pm. Little did Claire O'Mahony know what she had unleashed while on a walk with a stop-off for prayers at the grotto. Thousands of both the curious, and the religious, descended on Ballinspittle, close to Kinsale in south west County Cork, to witness for themselves this oddity. READ MORE It was the start of a bizarre summer (also remembered for its poor weather) with at least another 30 sightings around the country of statues of Our Lady and other venerables 'moving'. On August 15th, the feast of the Assumption, gardaí estimated more than15,000 people came to Ballinspittle. I was working in the newsroom (a desultory portakabin) of ERI, a Cork pirate radio station at the time. We drove down in the station's van to the scene of the headline-grabbing silly story one evening to report on it. The place was thronged. The grotto is in a natural amphitheatre and the source of all the fuss stands 30 feet above eye-level with a halo of light bulbs around her head. Opposite the grotto is a sloping hill where we perched up among the hordes, recording vox pops. The next morning, live on air, chatting to presenter John Creedon (who was to go onto better things at RTÉ) I declared that I had seen the statue move. It wasn't a complete bid for attention. I actually did experience what the psychology department at Univesity College Cork(yes, the heavy hitters were roped in by the media) described as an optical illusion. Stare at something static long enough at dusk and you will perceive what appears to be movement. And those twinkling lights around the Blessed Virgin's head helped. But that didn't dampen spirits. A letter writer to the then Cork Examiner bemoaned the 'atheist mods' who dismissed the religious fervour and said that the moving statue was a sign sent to strengthen the nation's faith. Psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare gave his opinion in the Irish Press, saying that the sighting in Ballinspittle 'occurs late in the evening to women of great religious devotion'. Others argued that the phenomenon was a response to an existential angst, exacerbated by the Cold War. And there was the stark reality of unemployment in Ireland at the time at 17per cent. Sociological factors explaining moving statues can be as relevant as deeply held religious conviction. Whatever the reasons, the world's media was enthralled by the story at Ballinspittle. Locals featured on the BBC's Newsnight. And in 2010, Terry Wogan visited the grotto to record a piece about it for a BBC show. Not everyone was charmed by the goings-on at the site of religious fervour and, no doubt, some mockery too. The Ballinspittle statue was vandalised by protestors against idolatry, led by Robert Draper who was found guilty of smashing other statues and went on to do six months in prison. The Ballinspittle statue was repaired. Today, the well-tended grotto includes a rail on which dozens of sets of Rosary beads hang. There is a caretaker's hut but no sign of life in it. There is out-of-date information about rosary gatherings for the month of May. A woman I spoke to who lives in Ballinspittle said that she sometimes hears the rosary being recited from the grotto, relayed by loudhailers. It sure makes a change from having your evening punctuated by social media alerts. Can you imagine the level of digital manipulation that would have been applied to photographs of statues of Our Lady had the internet been around four decades ago? After dropping into a few shops in Ballinspittle (including two great craft stores), and annoying the staff as I tried to extract moving statue lore from them, my companion said she needed to use the loo, so we left. First though, we drove back to the grotto where toilets had been installed to cater for pilgrims. They are in a grim grey-painted concrete building but a sign says they are out of service. A metaphor, perhaps, for the waning faith of the populace?
Irish Times
17-07-2025
- Irish Times
Boy could hear friend screaming as former Clare hurler Niall Gilligan hit him with a stick, court hears
A boy told gardaí that he could hear his 12-year old friend screaming as former All-Star and Clare All-Ireland winning hurler Niall Gilligan hit him with a stick. In a videoed interview with specialist gardaí played to the jury on Thursday at Ennis Circuit Court, the boy said that his friend 'got attacked by a man' who had 'a smooth, wooden stick kind of a thing and he just started hitting him with it'. The boy said his father later showed him a photo of Mr Gilligan and the boy confirmed that the man who attacked his friend was the accused. Mr Gilligan (48) of Rossroe, Kilmurry, Sixmilebridge, denies the assault causing harm with a stick of the boy at the Jamaica Inn hostel, Sixmilebridge on October 5th, 2023. READ MORE The two 12-year-olds had been exploring the abandoned hostel after 5pm on October 5th. Mr Gilligan owned the Jamaica Inn hostel at the time and the jury has been told that in the days leading up to October 5th, it had been broken into and vandalised. In the video interview carried out on November 11th, 2023, the witness said as the two boys left the building and came around a corner, they saw 'a tall, kind of strong-looking' man holding a stick and they both ran. He said that his friend – also 12 years old at the time – slipped 'and he just started attacking him with the bat'. The boy said: 'I thought he was getting back up but then I just heard the screams out of him, getting attacked by the man and a bat hitting off of him and then I ran around the corner into this industrial estate and I hid'. Asked how he felt by the specialist Garda interviewer, the boy said 'terrified', and added 'but I just got out of there as fast as I could, all I could think was 'get out of there' and I did'. The boy described the man as 'fit-looking like, gingery brown kinda hair'. He said: 'I seen him playing hurling with I was younger and he played for the Bridge and Clare.' The boy told gardaí Mr Gilligan is an auctioneer in Sixmilebridge. Asked about his friend's screaming, the boy said: 'I heard him shouting, like I heard him screaming, like, telling him to stop. My friend telling him to f**k off and to leave him alone, that was about it'. The boy hid in a nearby industrial estate and he said that felt relatively safe 'but I was still very scared that somehow he could have seen me'. A short time later, the boy said that he saw his friend come around the corner 'and he was limping like he was holding his arm, holding his hand, holding the wrist he broke and it was all swelling up'. The boy said that his friend was 'looking in pain, he had lots of mud all over him'. The boy told gardaí that his friend 'was very shaky, obviously he felt very, very scared and in a lot of pain'. He said: 'I was just supporting him to walk up, just like holding him up ... I put my arm around his back so I could support him so he could have one of his legs off the ground so it would be easier for him to walk.' The boy said that his friend 'said 'it just hurts everywhere' is all he said. The boy said that his friend told him 'go home because if he sees you, he is going to get you as well'. The cross examination of the boy on his direct video evidence is taking place on Thursday afternoon before a jury of seven men and five women.
