A woman who claimed her ex-partner told their three young children she was dead has obtained a protection order.
The man kept the children with him in an alleged breach of an access order. When she got the children back after seeking Garda assistance, they came running and crying to her, saying they thought she was dead, the woman told the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House, Dublin.
When she attended court on Wednesday with the children, all aged under eight, Judge Gerard Furlong asked them to wait outside while their mother gave evidence.
The woman said she had been with the man from her teens and he had mentally and physically abused her for years.
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She previously obtained an emergency protection order but did not pursue it because he “promised the moon and stars” he would change his behaviour.
They live apart but he does not stick to the terms of an agreed access order, she said. She is in fear of him, he makes false allegations against her and threatens her, and some of his family also bully her, she said. “I just want peace.”
Granting a protection order, the judge said he was worried about the impact of the man’s “very strange” behaviour on the children. When the woman said the children did not want to have an access visit with their father in subsequent days “because they are afraid”, the judge said both parents are currently bound by the access order but she could seek to discharge it.
The children came back to court then and the youngest asked his mother what she was doing. She said she was just having “grown-up talk”. The child said he had thought something “dangerous” was happening but she told him: “It’s not dangerous in here.”
Separately, a protection order was granted to a woman in her 70s who said she is scared her adult son’s drink- and drug-fuelled violent behaviour “will end in his doing something to me”.
Her son was “left for dead” after a violent assault by two masked men, but within weeks resumed his drinking and drug taking, she said. Her husband is dead, her adolescent granddaughter is caring for her and her son’s behaviour is putting her in fear for their safety, she said.
In another case, a young woman alleged her husband “uses me as a slave to provide the income”. He refuses to work and uses her earnings for his drinking and lifestyle, leaving her struggling to pay rent and leaving herself and their child hungry, she said.
He drinks at home daily and neglects to feed their child or help with homework, leaving that to her when she gets home about 10pm, she said.
She has a full-time cleaning job and does extra cleaning to pay almost €1,800 monthly rent on their two-bed apartment and support the family, she said. He goes out at night and demands she give him money for that, she added.
“I’m living in poverty and my child is very upset,” she said. “He is aware a father lying there all day drinking is not right. I want the situation to change, I can’t keep funding his lifestyle while me and my son go hungry.”
The woman had sought an ex-parte (one side only represented) emergency interim barring order (IBO) but the judge said, while the circumstances were “very sad and unusual”, the criteria for that had not been met. He granted a protection order on child welfare grounds but said he was not sure about its effectiveness for her “very specific difficulties”.
She could renew her IBO application when the matter returns to court but may have to consider bringing divorce or separation proceedings, he told her.
The judge dealt with about up to 20 applications on Wednesday.
When some applicants also alleged their ex-partners had threatened to post inappropriate images of them on social media, he told them that was a separate criminal matter they should report to gardaí.
