Cathal Crotty picked on the wrong woman and that is to be his enduring punishment

Cathal Crotty picked on the wrong woman. That is to be his enduring punishment. Instead of atoning behind bars for his crime before anonymously getting on with his life again, his name will be forever engraved as a horror story in the public mind.

Judge Tom O’Donnell gave undue preference to Crotty’s livelihood over that of his victim in deciding to let the violent assailant walk free. That will be his lasting ignominy. When he retired on Wednesday after 26 years on the bench, the traditional ritual of fawning tribute-paying by lawyers in his courtroom had to be abandoned because of fear of protests.

The Defence Forces knowingly harboured perpetrators of vicious violence against women until brave women cried out enough is enough. The generals are fighting a losing battle for the hearts and minds of the public but the people are not in a forgiving mood – all because Cathal Crotty picked on the wrong woman.

Natasha O’Brien joins a long line of women whose personal courage has given Ireland the kick up the backside it has needed each time to cop itself on. There should be monuments in all our cities to those women who have helped to civilise this country – Lavinia Kerwick, Vicky Phelan, Christine Buckley, Mary McGee, Sophia McColgan, Annie Murphy, Eileen Flynn, Brigid McCole, Marie Collins, Samantha Long and many others. John Moran, the inaugural directly-elected mayor of Limerick should immediately commission a statue of O’Brien to be erected in the city’s O’Connell Street, where Crotty beat her unconscious.

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He left her with a broken nose, bruises, nightmares and panic attacks. She quit her job because of the post-traumatic stress caused by the soldier she first encountered while walking home from work one night and asked him to stop shouting homophobic insults at men in O’Connell Street. Despite the damage Crotty did to her ability to work, the judge let him go free because, he said, a custodial sentence could harm his career in the Army. Under Defence Forces regulations, a serving member convicted of assault is only automatically dismissed from the ranks if a prison sentence is imposed.

Far more urgent initiatives than the carving of statues are needed to right all the wrongs exposed by this case, but statues – and their absence in commemorating reforming women – are part of the problem. Historically, the patriarchal establishment has chosen men as the national heroes who deserved to be carved in stone or have streets and squares and bridges named in their honour. Men rule. That was the groupthink message. It is the same message that permeates the scandal of a judge deeming a man’s job to be more important than a woman’s. The same message in the obsequious compliance by the Defence Forces with an unjust rule that soldiers can go on being soldiers and sailors can go on being sailors when they beat women unconscious or almost blind as long as the judge doesn’t send them to jail.

[ Miriam Lord: We say never again. We voice outrage. We listen to the promises. Until the next time ]

The ranks of the establishment are closing already. There are mutterings in legal circles that the media has been unfair to the judge.

The generals point to the rules that prevent them from dismissing the likes of Crotty until after his sentencing. Why was the top brass of the Army not banging harder on the door of the Minister for Defence long before now demanding that this rule be abolished?

For reasons as yet unknown, Naval Petty Officer David O’Gorman is still in uniform after pleading guilty last summer to an attack on a woman that was so violent one of her eyes has been displaced for life.

Natasha O’Brien’s strength of character contrasts with Crotty’s cowardice. He ran away when other men intervened and then lied to investigating gardaí that it was she who had started it, only admitting his guilt when presented with his pathetic macho brag on Snapchat: “Two to put her down, two to put her out.” She, on the other hand, had the integrity to challenge his homophobic jeers and, when he walked free from court, to express her sense of abandonment by the establishment with such searing intelligence that the country sat up and listened. Her courage brought out thousands of protesters in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Limerick and brought her to Leinster House where TDs stood and applauded her.

[ The bar is so low for violent men they are ‘to be given credit’ when they admit their guilt ]

If only politicians could borrow some of her courage. There is compelling evidence that Crotty’s assault on Natasha O’Brien arose from a hatred of gay people. It began with him yelling “faggot” at men in the street. When she happened along with a work colleague, he called her a lesbian and punched her and punched her until she blacked out. Maybe if he had also been charged with a crime under hate speech legislation he would be sitting in a prison cell right now.

Ireland’s laws on hate crimes predate the internet age, are sorely inadequate and seldom prosecuted. The body politic does not have the guts to deal with that. Helen McEntee, the Minister for Justice who has extensively strengthened laws against domestic violence, wants to introduce a hate bill that covers hate speech but colleagues in her own Fine Gael party have loudly objected, despite the Taoiseach’s law-and-order mantra. Members of Fianna Fáil have been as vocal. Having supported the bill, Sinn Féin did a U-turn after finding itself on the losing side of the family and carers referendum and called on the Government to scrap the bill entirely because, they said, it is flawed.

Not a whisper about it has emanated from Leinster House since then. Most bills brought before the Oireachtas are flawed, until amendments are made to improve them. TDs need to pluck up their courage, roll up their sleeves and fix the hate bill to address, among others, those pseudo protectors of women protesting against “single male” immigrants. The same protesters have been mysteriously silent about the Crotty case.

Women have heard too many platitudes about zero tolerance and too many never agains. What we want is an establishment with the courage to act – the sort of courage shown by all those women who rocked the system and to whom there are no monuments.

[ Defence Forces morale on the floor as commentary over Cathal Crotty case seen as unfair ]