The sentencing of two men this week for assault causing harm has put the high incidence of serious attacks in the spotlight - what is fuelling it, asks Kathy Sheridan
The case up for sentencing at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Tuesday had a dispiritingly familiar ring to it. Youth, alcohol, a late night, a mindless assault, triumphal air-punching, distraught families, ruined lives.
A 2am attack on Barry Duggan in April 2003 had left the 37-year-old librarian in St James's Hospital for nearly a month, some of it in an induced coma, with severe head and brain injuries, a broken jaw and eye socket. His attackers claimed that they and a friend had been threatened by the victim, who, it transpired, was so drunk he had fallen off his bicycle in front of them, to great hilarity and mockery.
When the case came to trial in June this year in a blaze of publicity, Stephen Nugent (24) and Dermot Cooper (29) denied assault causing serious harm. During cross-examination, Hugh Smith, an orthopaedic surgeon, accepted that Duggan's brain injury was consistent with a person falling and hitting his head off the ground and agreed that the fall from his bicycle could have caused such an injury. On day five the two accused changed their pleas and admitted to a lesser charge of assaulting Duggan, causing him harm.
The attack on Duggan was just one of around 30 such serious assaults taking place on the streets of Dublin every week in 2003. What propelled this one into the headlines was that the perpetrators were middle-class: Nugent is a former Davis Cup tennis player and Cooper a university graduate. They had addresses in Swords and Stillorgan, and were therefore characterised as "posh thugs" in the tabloids.
Last Tuesday Judge Donagh McDonagh triggered a spate of critical comment when he sentenced them to three years in prison, then suspended all but three months of it, saying he had no wish to destroy young lives.
One newspaper wondered if it was possible that a defendant's background could influence judges' decisions, "perhaps unconsciously", and if Irish courts were too lenient in general terms.
Barry Duggan's GP, Dr Micheál Ó Tiagharnaigh, a south Dublin inner city practitioner, sickened at the blatant brutality increasingly evident in sport and drink-fuelled rows and the increasingly middle-class face of those involved, made an eloquent plea on RTÉ's Liveline for all perpetrators of assaults leading to head injury to face a mandatory jail sentence.
"It was sheer luck that Barry Duggan didn't die. If he had, the sentence would have reflected that," he told The Irish Times later. "But it shouldn't depend on luck. It should be the witnesses' statements that convict you, not the outcome." He made it clear that he was not stipulating any specific length of sentence nor was he "picking on" Cooper and Nugent in particular: "Their lives are effectively ruined given their social background. If you're an international tennis coach needing visas to travel to America and other countries, one week or one day in prison is going to have a major impact on you. . . But as a society we have to be prepared to make the bold gesture - if you kick a person on the ground and kick him in the head, you will go to prison. We don't forgive someone having several pints and driving a car or a man being drunk and beating up his wife, yet we seem to be kind of selective as to what's acceptable when it comes to this kind of attack."
He was one of many reflecting this week not only on the random, unprovoked nature of many such attacks but on the increased savagery of them. There was no shortage of examples.
JOHN, A FATHER and businessman from Drogheda, Co Louth, described how his 15-year-old son, Robert*, was attacked by three youths at the entrance to the Superquinn car park in Sutton on Dublin's northside a few weeks ago and sustained a smashed cheekbone.
Robert, a confident, 6ft 1in (185cm) highly promising rugby prop didn't see it coming, or even the people who did it. A few words were said by someone in their large group directed at a couple of others, then Robert and his friend set out for home, a car moved up beside them and Robert bent to hear something from the apparently friendly driver. He received a stunning, unmerciful punch from someone behind him and was on the ground under attack from three people. Robert's only memory is of hearing a girl in the car shouting an attacker's name and begging him to stop.
The attack took place on Friday, September 23rd at about 10pm, and John is appealing for witnesses. The family has roots in the area and were able to come up with three suspects' names in a couple of hours. According to locals, they have "history". Gardaí have told John they have a witness but his parents will not let him speak out "for fear of reprisals".
"When is society going to say, 'This stops here. Now'?", asks John. "When are people going to realise that it could be their son next?" For Robert, the psychological effects are incalculable. Before the attack, he stayed with his aunt near Portmarnock, Co Dublin, during the school week; now he goes home to Drogheda every night, adding another three and a half hours to his school day.
His attackers have cost the health system one night for keeping an in-patient in Beaumont and two nights in St James's, plus significant numbers of professional and ancillary staff and skills required for a four and a half hour operation and follow-up.
WHILE THE DEPARTMENT of Justice this week claimed that the incidence of assault causing harm has dropped in the past three years, this would be disputed by many. Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny recently produced statistics that showed that serious assaults in Dublin had almost trebled from 12 a week in 2000 to 33 a week now. These were in addition to some 40 "minor" assaults a week. Meanwhile, detection rates were just four-fifths of what they were in 2000 and the suspicion is that many go unreported.
A year-long audit of maxillofacial trauma (facial fractures and broken jaws, but not including cuts or damage to soft tissue) - presented at the national maxillofacial unit of St James's during 2003 by senior registrar Pádraig Ó Ceallaigh and consultant maxillofacial surgeon Cliff Beirne - leaves no doubt about the link between gender, youth, alcohol and assault. The alcohol factor is recorded on the basis of patients' comments and it can therefore be unclear as to which party was drunk or ultimately responsible, but one thing is clear: 453 of the 871 referrals were caused by assault; of the 453, 419 were male and about 70 per cent of these were reported as alcohol-related.
IN VIEW OF the recent controversies over violence in sport, it's notable that by far the nearest contender to the assault category in this audit was sports injuries. At 183, they amounted to nearly a quarter of the referrals. Road traffic accidents came fourth, behind falls. The fact that falls tend to involve elderly people may explain why the average age of the patients was 28.5 for males and 34 for females.
As Pádraig Ó Ceallaigh points out, this audit does not take account of multiple injury; for example, 53 of the referrals also had damaged eye sockets. After surgery involving a team of about eight plus ancillary staff, some patients also need to see dieticians, oral hygienists and other specialists. Six months after his hospital discharge, Barry Duggan was still under the care of a speech therapist, an occupational therapist and a physiotherapist.
Consultant maxillofacial surgeon Cliff Beirne believes that the rate of assaults has not been diminishing. He was so concerned about the rising national phenomenon four or five years ago that he went to see officials in the Department of Justice. "They were concerned but it was never followed up," he says. Meanwhile, on any given Monday morning in St James's, "there could be seven or eight guys sitting there with broken jaws. Sometimes, it could be 20.And they will have to be admitted and treated within a certain time. They'll need scans, theatre space and beds, which come at the expense of other people who are on trolleys in A&E." People requiring elective surgery for facial deformities or cleft lip and palate fall down the list, for example. And because beds are limited, even cancer patients may be affected along the line.
Like many other observers, he notes the huge levels of aggression evident in sports injuries. "Now you get people who've been hit repeatedly, people who've been pummelled on the ground. It's numbing. There seems to be a change in the way people act. I think it just mirrors the social changes we're seeing."
And like many other observers, Beirne wonders whether drugs might be a factor in the mix.
"One of the first things new casualty officers in the hospital are told now," he adds, "is to identify acute cocaine intoxication. It used to be paracetamol."
* Not his real name