A 25-YEAR-OLD woman yesterday told how her former boyfriend threatened to burn down her home because she had initiated compensation proceedings against him.
Ms Stephanie Kidney was a back-seat passenger in a car owned by Malcolm Barry, from Maurland Estate, Carrigaline, Co Cork, and driven by his friend, Dcsmond Crowley, from Glenwood, Carrigaline, which struck a telegraph pole on July 31st, 1991. She is suing for the injuries she received in the High Court in Cork before Mr Justice Peter Kelly. She is also suing the Motor Insurance Bureau of Ireland because the car was uninsured at the time of the accident.
The mother of a two-year-old girl, Ms Kidney, from Aldergrove, Belgooly, Cork, was 19 when she started going out with Mr Barry. She was an apprentice hairdresser and had wanted to make a career of her work, but was unable to do so because of a back injury she sustained in the accident.
Three weeks after she met him, Mr Barry got a car. She said that he had told her father he was insured under his mother's policy.
On the day of the accident, Des Crowley was driving. He lost control of the car on a bend and struck a telegraph pole on the plaintiffs side. After the accident, Ms Kidney got out of the car, but could not stand because of back pain.
She was admitted to the Regional Hospital in Cork and later transferred to the Orthopaedie Hospital, where she spent three weeks on her back. Her boyfriend warned her not to say she was in a car accident, but to tell the doctors she had fallen off her bike, because he would be in trouble for not having insurance. She told that story in the Regional Hospital, but her father gave doctors the true version of events when she was in the Orthopaedic Hospital.
When Mr Barry heard of this he told her not to make a statement to the gardai. However, about two weeks after she left hospital she had consulted a solicitor and the gardai. Relations between herself and Mr Barry deteriorated after that.
Mr Barry had called to her home late one night and tried to push his way in past her father. She had talked to him because she believed This might quieten him down, but he had told her he was going to get the lot of them. He was going to burn down their home with all of them in it.
The case continues.