A man’s wife and his ex-partner have been granted protection orders against him within days of each other.
The ex-partner, who broke up with him more than three years ago, told the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House, Dublin, on Friday that the man knows his wife recently contacted her and he had said he was going to ruin their lives.
He has contacted his ex-partner via social media and she said she feels unsafe. She made a statement to gardaí after learning that during their relationship, he had recorded a video on his phone of him laughing after her then two-year-old child was hurt when he braked hard in his car after deliberately not putting on the child’s seat belt.
The man has retained private images of the woman on his phone and a letter from her to her daughter, who is not his child, she said.
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“It’s like an obsession,” the woman told the court.
The ex-partner said she had “healed” after her relatively short relationship with the man, is in another relationship for some time, recently had a baby and wanted nothing to do with him.
The man’s wife, who obtained a protection order against him days earlier, returned to the court on Friday to support her husband’s ex-partner in her application.
Judge Shalom Binchy said that while it was “unusual”, she would hear evidence from the wife in the context of the man’s ex-partner’s application.
The wife came into court and said her husband is a “narcissist” and a “very controlling and dangerous man”.
“He said he is going to ruin my life and hers [the ex-partner’s],” she said.
The man had leaked private images of his wife on to social media and she believed he would do the same concerning the other woman.
The man had shown his wife the video of his ex-partner’s daughter in his car after he deliberately did not put on the child’s seat belt, she said.
The wife said he referred to the child in a “very nasty” way and had shown her another video of the child falling off a slide.
After her evidence, the wife left court and the judge told his ex-partner she would grant a protection order.
In another case, a mother was granted a barring order against her mentally ill son.
Aged in his 30s, he was diagnosed with a serious mental illness nine years ago but has no insight and is not compliant with medication or outpatient appointments, she said.
He was admitted as an involuntary patient under the Mental Health Act four times in the past 20 months.
Her son is very angry and a recluse with no friends, and his behaviour is getting more difficult and erratic, she said.
The woman said he had come into her home with a crowbar and a look in his eyes that “terrified” her. She always keeps her car keys on her body and fled the house and drove away.
On another occasion, he locked her and a friend out of the house overnight by using a rope.
He was discharged from a mental health unit a few days ago with no money and no clothes and she does not know where he is, the distressed woman said. He was discharged despite a Garda detective contacting the unit, saying her son is very vulnerable and in potential danger of being “radicalised”.
She keeps hoping someone in a hospital “will acknowledge he needs long-term support and help”.
Granting a 12-month barring order, the judge said: “It sounds like he has been very much let down by the mental health services, and neither of you should have been left in this situation and have to come to court.”
When the woman asked could the court do anything about the mental health issues raised, the judge said she had no power to do so.
