Woman jumped off balcony to flee ex-partner threatening to kill her, court told

A 41-year-old man has been jailed for 18 months after he threatened to kill his fomer partner on Christmas Eve.

The court heard the defendant put the woman in such fear that she jumped from the balcony of her first floor apartment and broke both her ankles.

The man, who can’t be named for legal reasons to protect the identity of his child with the woman, pleaded guilty to three counts of threatening to kill woman on September 8th, September 30th and December 24th 2018.

The man also pleaded guilty to a fourth charge of breaching a protection order obtained by the 33-year-old woman against him when he showed up at her apartment in a town in Co Cork on December 24th 2018.

Garda Tim McSweeney told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that on December 24th 2018, the man showed up at her apartment but began behaving strangely so the woman excused herself for a moment and went to the bathroom.

She texted a friend from the bathroom and asked the friend to contact that gardaí as she was fearful for herself and a five-month-old baby asleep in a bedroom which she had with the accused.

Doorbell

When she returned from the bathroom, the accused got angry and aggressive and threatened to kill her and went to the kitchen to a get a knife and she began to fear for her life when the doorbell rang.

She wanted to answer the doorbell but the accused refused to allow her answer it and went himself to do so and when he did, she made her way on to a balcony in the apartment and jumped down on to a concrete floor 12 feet below.

She broke both her ankles but was able to make her way to an adjoining apartment to ask for help only to discover that it was the gardaí who were at her front door and they arrested the man for breach of the protection order.

Garda McSweeney told the court that in first incident on September 8th, the woman had returned home from a night out with a female friend and had gone to bed but in the middle of the night, the accused woke her up.

He threw water on her face as she lay in bed and told her that he had been checking her mobile phone as she slept and accused her of flirting with other men and threatened to kill her.

Later that month on September 30th, they had been talking in the apartment and she had joked about something but he took offence at the joke and became angry and threatened to kill her, said Garda McSweeney.

Impact statement

The court heard a victim impact statement from the woman in which she said that accused had been emotionally, psychologically and physically abusive towards her ever since the birth if their daughter in September 2018.

“After the first incident that he threatened to kill me, I became fearful of my safety. I felt there was no safe place for me to seek help as he was watching me all the time, trying to predict my next move so I could exit the relationship.

"I felt hopeless and scared at this point and I became very stressed – I tried my hardest to pretend that everything was not affecting me," said the woman who told how she fled Ireland for a period after the second incident.

She told how she feared for her safety and that of her family and she ended up staying in a refuge for a month to guarantee their safety and the whole episode led to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which she still suffers from.

“I used to wake up at night, terrified at the thought of him finding me, terrorising me and killing me in different ways – I woke up in a cold sweat ... I was physically sick and got headaches, crying all night, every night.”

She told how she got a protection order against her former partner but the nearest Garda Station was some 20 minutes away and she felt “hopeless and severely worried that he could turn up at my house and kill me in that time.”

“On December 24th, I jumped off the balcony to escape him and broke both my ankles. I still remember the panic when he produced a knife – going to hospital I didn’t know if was alive or dead- I lost touch with my mind and my body.”

The woman told how she has had to change her car and move away from Cork while she has also had to limit her activity on social media so as not to reveal her whereabouts as she continues to live in fear of him.

“I am still suffering from PTSD over a year later and am in counselling to help ease the psychological effects of coming to terms with the fact that I might have died during these threats to kill – I still suffer nightmares.”

Horrendous ordeal

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin said that the accused has subjected his ex-partner to a horrendous ordeal over a three month period which culminated in her fearing so much for her life that she jumped from a 12 foot high balcony.

He said that the man had caused a level of distress to his ex-partner that was shocking to see and his lack of insight into the consequences of his actions was simply “frightening”.

He said that the accused wrongly felt he had level of ownership or possession of the woman where he could make her do as he saw fit and he was out of control on the night of December 24th when he made a real threat to her.

He sentenced the man to two years in jail but suspended the final six months and he ordered him to hand over a cheque for €1,000 he had brought to court as a gesture of remorse to his victim and if she did not want it, it should be given to the Vincent de Paul.