Judge adjourns case between married couple amidst claims he tried to flush her head down toilet

A woman has told a court her husband allegedly assaulted her on Christmas Day when she was pregnant and on a separate occasion, he tried to flush her head down a toilet.

At a Family Law Court in the west of Ireland, which cannot be disclosed, the woman told Judge Alec Gabbett: “I am in fear of this man. I am being terrorised in my own home.”

She has recently left the family home and said that she was seeking a Barring Order against her husband, which would require him to vacate the family home, “for my own safety”.

She added: “I asked my friends do they put up with domestic abuse – I thought it was kind of normal and they tell me that their husbands don’t hit them.” 

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The woman’s husband is also seeking a Safety Order against her after he was previously granted a temporary Protection Order against her on an ex parte basis.

Judge Gabbett said: “Ninety percent of the time they might hate each other and there are times where there is harmony.

“There has been a very volatile situation in this house since 2007 with a constant rollercoaster of emotion from both sides.”

Judge Gabbett made his comment after the woman, under cross examination, confirmed that she had sex with her husband on April 6, one day after appearing in court to obtain a Domestic Violence Protection Order against him on an ex parte basis.

She said: “He is either looking for sex or wants me to cancel the order and not go ahead”. She said that her husband left underwear for her in a letterbox emblazoned ‘love your husband’.

“It’s all a joke to him,” she continued. “He is all funny afterwards - after you get slapped - and the cycle continues.

“This is why I am here - I am looking for the protection of the courts to stop this cycle.”

Solicitor for the accused, Ms Bridgette Meehan, said that the woman had made domestic violence applications against her client in 2007, 2008, 2011, 2019, 2020 and 2024 and withdrawn them on every occasion until now.

In reply, the woman said: “I wanted his behaviour to change. For many years I thought the marriage would work and I thought that this would work as a threat but he has just got worse.”

Asked what kept her in the marriage by Judge Gabbett, the woman said: “I had nowhere to go.”

Providing evidence of her husband’s alleged assaults on her, the woman said that in April 2023 “he came over and walloped me into the face, pulled me by hair and grabbed me by the hair into the bathroom.”

She said that while in the bathroom “he started to try to flush my head down the toilet and walloped me on my shoulders and my back”.

“On Christmas Day 2023 he started hitting me again because I wasn’t happy with the Christmas arrangements that we were having.”

The woman said that her husband also assaulted her when was pregnant and that there was financial control in the marriage.

“Every week I asked him for my money - he called them my wages,” she said.

“He would say to the kids 'will i give Mammy her wages this week?' Did Mammy behave herself?,” she told the court.

“He cut off my money if I didn't behave in the way that he wanted me to behave. He tells me ‘you're ugly, the state of your hair, you’ve grey hair, you're too skinny, did I say for you to lose weight? Who else would have you?”.

Judge Gabbett said that the case is crying out for mediation and adjourned the case to a later date.