Five emergency domestic violence orders were granted by a judge at the Dublin District Family Court yesterday after violent incidents over the weekend, including by an adult son whose mother fears is turning out like his abusive father.
The woman told Judge Sinead Ní Chulacháin yesterday that on Sunday night her son, who lives at home with her and her two younger children, was shouting, aggressive and was verbally abusive after she refused to drive him where he wanted to go.
The woman said she normally drove him anywhere he asked, but she had already collected him from the same location earlier in the day. When she said no “it all started”.
She initially didn’t want to repeat to the judge the things her son had said to her, but then said he called her “a whore, a tramp and a slut” . When she asked him to stop and leave the house he told her to shut her mouth or he would punch her. She became afraid for herself and the younger children and called gardaí, she said.
She said her children’s father had been abusive and when he finally left the family home a couple of years ago he told their son he was to be “the boss of the house”.
“I’m afraid he’ll turn out like his father; an abusive man,” she said.
Judge Ní Chulacháin granted a protection order, requiring the young man not to use violence against his mother or put her in fear of violence. She adjourned the ex-parte case – in which only one side is heard – to the New Year when she will hear from both parties.
Another woman with a child in a buggy said she was in fear of her ex-partner.
“I’m terrified; look at my face,” she said, turning her head so the judge could see a bruise on her cheek and simultaneously cooing at her baby to try to keep him quiet.
She said in the preceeding days she had cancelled the baby’s birthday party after her family got bad news. She was upstairs lying down with the child for an afternoon nap when the father began banging on the door, demanding she have the child ready to take out.
He called her a “malicious, evil cow” and said she didn’t deserve to have children and was coming between him and his son, the woman said. She had to call gardaí. The judge granted the ex-parte order until the New Year when a full hearing will be held.
In another case, a woman, tearful and shaking in the witness box, told Judge Ní Chulacháin how her estranged husband came to collect their three children for access on Friday and became abusive in front of the children.
“He said he hates me and hates the sight of me and he wished he never met me,” she said.
He tried to hit her, but their teenager intervened to prevent it, she said. The judge granted a protection order until January and suggested the woman attend domestic violence charity Women's Aid, which has an office in the courthouse and offers counselling and support.
The Judge also granted a safety order, a longer running protection order, to a woman after hearing her alcoholic husband came home drunk and urinated on the floor in front of their young son, who felt he had to “clean up after him”. The woman also described how she came home with her son on Sunday night and found her husband lying on the kitchen floor “unconscious from drink”.
“He had urinated all over himself and there was a cigarette burning away,” she said. She said her husband was very abusive and she had taken out a protection order against him in June, but his behaviour had not changed.
The man did not appear in court and the judge gave an order for 12 months to give the woman time “to regulate her position”.
