A woman garda who was beaten by associates of a Dublin criminal gang was awarded almost €105,000 in damages at the High Court on Monday.
At a Garda compensation hearing, Mr Justice Bernard Barton was told Garda Amanda Lynch and her two colleagues were given such a vicious beating that a detective was forced to extricate them at gunpoint.
The judge heard two of her attackers were subsequently jailed and a member of the gang had since been murdered.
Paul McGarry SC, for Garda Lynch, told the court she and another garda, together with a trainee, had been called out to deal with an incident in Foster Avenue, Cabra, Dublin, on November 30th, 2007.
Crime family
When they arrived in the area a number of assailants, associated with a very serious crime family in that area of Dublin, jumped her and her two colleagues and she was viciously assaulted.
Mr McGarry said Garda Lynch suffered injuries to her neck, head, face and stomach as well as psychological injures and she developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
Garda Lynch (37), now stationed in Co Longford, told the judge she had drawn her extendable baton and told the men to stand back when she was attacked, her baton was wrenched from her and she was punched and kicked around her head and face and kicked in the stomach.
She told the court she had recognised two of her attackers as she had seen members of the criminal gang on a number of occasions. She and her colleagues had been assaulted for about 10 minutes, she said.
Garda Lynch said her colleague had distracted her attackers long enough for her to call for assistance and when help arrived a detective had to produce his official firearm to make arrests.
The mother-of-one said she had later received information that there was a threat to her life and for her own safety, she requested a transfer out of Dublin.
The court heard that Garda Lynch spent 17 hours in the Mater hospital after the attack, where she was treated for her injuries. After discharge, she was treated for psychiatric injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, the stress of which had led to her developing a chronic attack of psoriasis.
Garda Lynch told the judge she would like to have more children and had been informed that some of the drugs she had been prescribed could make it difficult to become pregnant again. She would have to come off them for a very long period before she could become pregnant, she said.
Similar injuries
Barrister Kevin Dinneen, for the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, presented the court with a previous comparison award in which another judge had awarded €50,000 for similar injuries.
The judge said Garda Lynch had not made a big deal about her physical injuries and had minimised her psychiatric injuries, but she had suffered a great deal of stress and her family and social life had been significantly affected through her psychological trauma. She had, for a period, became a recluse in her home.
The judge, awarding her €85,000 compensation against the Minister as well as €19,853 special damages she had incurred since the attack, and said he found her to be completely genuine and accepted all of her evidence.