A MAN has been sentenced to five years in prison for attacking his wife on two occasions with a Stanley knife, cutting the tops off her toes in one attack and biting her nose and slashing her face with the knife in the second.
Martin Ward (41), a father of 10, who lives in a caravan at Abbeybog, Abbeyknockmoy, Tuam, was found guilty by a jury at Galway Circuit Criminal Court of two charges of assaulting his wife, Kathleen Ward, causing her harm on September 22nd, 2009 at Green Gate Bog, Abbert, and again at Abbey Bog, Abbeyknockmoy three days later on September 25th, 2009.
In her statement, made to Garda Eoin Fox on September 25th, 2009, Mrs Ward said that on September 22nd last year while she and her husband were drinking heavily in their caravan at Green Gate Bog, he got “real angry” about 11pm and started hitting her. He took out a Stanley knife and came at her, cutting the tops off the toes on her right foot.
She said in the statement that they moved their caravan the following evening to Abbey Bog and three days later, on September 25th, after another bout of heavy drinking, Martin Ward “went mad” and bit her on the nose. He got the Stanley knife again and cut her forehead over her left eye.
She ran from him and hid in the bog in the dark. He couldn’t find her, and she walked about six miles to her mother’s caravan in Cluain Tuath, near Tuam, and from there contacted the Garda.
Mrs Ward denied in the witness box that she had ever been assaulted by her husband. She said the hitch on their caravan had fallen across her toes and that the cut over her eye occurred when she fell about after drinking heavily with her husband.
Det Sgt Mick O’Driscoll told the sentencing hearing the couple were both chronic alcoholics and they lived in primitive conditions in very small caravans for years with no electricity or running water on bog roads in the Tuam area.
He said the council had provided them with two houses in the past, but they always returned to the caravan after a few months.
He said that no matter how drunk Martin Ward had been over the years, he had always co-operated with gardaí and had been polite and respectful to them.
“We will have to put a uniform on his wife so and perhaps he will respect her as well,” Judge Raymond Groarke observed.
Sgt O’Driscoll said Kathleen Ward had made numerous complaints of assault against her husband to the Garda over the last 10 years, but on every occasion the prosecution case fell when she withdrew her complaints.
However, he said, there had been one successful prosecution when Martin Ward received a three-year sentence in the Circuit Court on March 1st, 2007, for assaulting his wife. The final two years and three months of that sentence had been suspended for five years at the time on condition he stay off drink and stay away from his wife.
Mrs Ward had come back to the court asking for that ban to be lifted in July 2007.
Judge Groarke told Ward the two assaults on his wife could only be described as “unmitigated acts of savagery”, and he would end up murdering somebody.
The judge observed the couple had a complicated and destructive type of dependency relationship due to their alcohol problems, and that was why Mrs Ward had withdrawn her complaints down the years. He noted Ward had “attacked and savaged” his wife while under court bond in relation to the previous conviction in 2007.
He then activated the two years and three-month portion of the sentence which had been suspended in 2007, before imposing two consecutive three-year sentences on Ward (totalling six years) for the two most recent assaults.
Judge Groarke said Ward was now facing eight years and three months in jail. “And that is the place for him, because he is a menace and he is going to do far more harm than he has done to date,” he said.
He then suspended the final three years and three months of the sentence on condition Ward keep the peace and not reoffend for four years, abstain from alcohol, and come under the supervision of the probation service for 18 months on his release from prison.
The judge banned Ward from going near his wife on his release unless she came back to court and asked for that ban to be lifted.
He also banned him from setting foot in Tuam for five years after his release.