A distressed woman who alleged her husband used “sex objects” on her without her permission has secured a protection order against him.
She said the man uses cocaine and Viagra and “started using sex objects on me without asking me”. She said she woke up one day and tried to take her own life and had told hospital staff she was “really sore down there”.
The woman, who alleged she suffered rape, sexual assault and “mental torture”, told the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House, Dublin, that she reported the matter but did not want to press charges.
“We have kids,” she said.
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When her application came ex parte (one side only represented) before Judge Gerard Furlong on Friday, he granted an emergency protection order, returnable next March. The order restrains the use of violence or any action that would put the woman in fear.
The judge told the woman that if anything happened to put her in fear, she could contact gardaí to enforce the order and come back to the court any time. When he told her she had the option at any stage to press charges, she replied: “No, he’s my kids’ father. I really didn’t want to do this.”
The application was among about 20 that came before the judge, most by women against their partners or ex-partners.
Another distressed woman who alleged “relentless” abuse by her husband, including splitting her lip, dragging her by her hair from room to room, breaking sweeping brushes on her and spilling bins on her, secured an interim barring order.
Her husband has a “significant drink and weed” addiction and she said she is “constantly worried” when he has no weed “because I know it will start again”.
“I can almost guarantee he will be physically abusive if he does not have it.”
The man is constantly verbally abusive, calling her obese and accusing her, using derogatory language, of having affairs, she said.
He once left the house drunk, threatening to kill himself and taking her phone, and drove away in her car, she said. She called gardaí twice but he was back in the house by the time they arrived and “laughed in their faces”.
The effect of his “relentless” behaviour on herself and their children is “horrendous”, the woman said.
“I have done my best to shield them but they know what is going on,” she told the judge.
The judge called a garda to the courtroom after being told the woman’s husband was on the premises and directed the officer to serve the man with the order while he was in the building.
Her husband has tried to “sabotage” any efforts by her to get help, the woman told the judge. He once made her sign a “contract” he had written himself which stated she would call her family and tell them she had lied about him being abusive, she said.
“He says it is his right to abuse me and that it turns me on,” she said.
A protection order was granted to another woman who has been separated from her husband for several years but they remain living in the same house with their children. She alleged coercive control by her husband, saying he has placed a tracker on her car and engages in threatening behaviour towards her.
He drinks excessively around the children and uses them as an “emotional crutch”, seeking to turn them against her, she said. She added that she had experienced physical abuse by him in the past, is anxious and in constant fear of his “next outburst”, and the children are “constantly on edge”.
In three separate applications, two fathers secured protection orders against their adult children and one mother got a barring order. In all three cases, the adult children were alleged to be abusing alcohol and/or drugs and engaging in behaviour that put their parents in fear.
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