Garda Niall Daly was walking down Main Street in Newbridge at 2.30 a.m. last August 19th when he witnessed a man on the ground being beaten by three people, two of them women. "He was on the ground, trying to protect himself," the garda told a later court hearing. "But he retaliated when he got back on his feet and punched a woman in the face, knocking her down. He was very drunk."
Last week, the man on the ground - the man who had been trying to defend himself, Andrew Halpin - appeared in court. He had been summonsed on two public order offences: of being drunk in a public place, and of being guilty of threatening and insulting behaviour. He was not charged with assault, perhaps because Garda Daly - who declined to speak to me about the case, and no doubt with good reason, considering the publicity it has received - was intelligent enough to know that an assault charge in such circumstances would have been simply outrageous.
Women's role
Mr Halpin, who was not legally represented, pleaded guilty, and apologised to the court for wasting Garda time. Giving him the benefit of the Probation Act in light of the fact that he had a clean record, Judge Connellan told him he should learn to drink like a man, and then the judge addressed himself to the role of two women in attacking the accused. "It seems to me that women are getting drunk and acting like alley cats. Then they are fighting like savages," he said. "I can't same I blame the man for hitting her if she had attacked him." At which point the roof fell in - as it invariably does when anyone detects victimhood of any kind other than female.
The most witless comment came from Christine Ross, chief executive of the National Women's Council, who said that the judge's remarks seemed to imply that violence was acceptable because drink was involved. "His comments showed that, in some cases, judges are in need of gender awareness training and training on issues involved in violence against women."
Frances Fitzgerald TD was neck and neck with her in the cretinous stakes. She said the judge's comments raised "the important issue of the sensitivity of the judiciary to violence against women". Jan O'Sullivan TD said that it appeared that the judge was defending physical violence against women, which was unacceptable, and Breda Raggett, national president of the Irish Countrywomen's Association, called on the judge to apologise, saying his comments were "highly offensive".
Male violence
The poor bloody judge issued a statement saying that he simply hadn't defended violence against women, but it was, of course, largely ignored: whoever remembers the Newbridge case will tell you that it was another case of a male judge defending male violence towards women. So even though the professional feminists' response both to the judge and to the primary victim of the assault, Andrew Halpin, was the purest rubbish, utterly unrelated to the actual facts of the case, I expect neither a public apology to Judge Connellan and Andrew Halpin, nor a public retraction of any kind.
Consider this. If District Justice Michelle Connellan had been dealing with an Andrea Halpin, who had been attacked on the ground by two men and a woman, and who, when she got to her feet, clobbered one of the men, would the feminist lobby deplore her deed? Would they denounce District Judge Michelle Connellan for declaring: "It seems to me that men are getting drunk and acting like wild dogs. Then they are fighting like savages. I can't say I blame the woman for hitting him if he had attacked her"?
We know precisely the response of the feminist lobby to such a case. It would be approval both of the assaulted woman's retaliation against one of her tormenters, and of the judge's words in condemning drunken male behaviour. But, of course, we get precisely the opposite response when the genders are swapped, with the usual vapid humbug that Judge Connellan go for "gender awareness training and training on issues involving violence against women", God help us.
This witless mumbo-jumbo would be merely risible if it weren't so representative of what passes for thought in such quarters. As John Waters has repeatedly pointed out, responsibility for domestic violence divides roughly equally between the sexes, though since men tend to be stronger, the outcome for their victims is more serious. However, though the primary issue is responsibility for starting violence, the entire violence-in-the-home industry is predicated on the baseless assumption that violence is a male monopoly, and victimhood uniquely female.
Domestic violence
These are Orwellian lies. The vast majority of victims of public violence are male; the fact that the majority of culprits responsible are male is relevant to the victims only to the degree in which they are hurt more. Every survey, starting with Erin Pizzey's pioneer work on this, shows that domestic violence is initiated as much by women as by men; yet we have created an entire political class whose existence depends on the fiction that men alone are violent, and women alone are victims. This class alone is asked to comment on every court case, setting the agenda with its apartheid vision and its selective compassion. These feminists never admit they're wrong, never admit that men can be victims too. Instead they bully and they hector and they deride, endlessly editing or shaping the truth to suit their needs. Poor Andrew Halpin and Judge Michael Connellan will not, alas, be the last men to discover that.