Wife and children ‘afraid of the weekend’ due to husband’s behaviour, judge told

“People wait for the weekend to have fun but we are afraid of the weekend,” a distressed mother told the emergency domestic violence court in Dublin.

The woman said she and her young children live in fear of weekends because of her husband’s excessive drinking, anger, and verbal and emotional abuse.

On a recent Saturday, he was drinking a second bottle of vodka in less than 24 hours and she asked him to stop, she said. He shouted at her and verbally abused her, including calling her a “slut” and telling her to leave “his house” in front of their several children, all aged under 12, who were crying and distressed and begging him to let her stay in the home.

“When I saw the emotional distress and fear on the kids’ faces, I decided this is the last time and I need a protection order,” she said.

She has suffered years of such abuse and had begun taking medication because of the effects on her emotional wellbeing, the woman said.

Several previous interventions by family members aimed at stopping her husband’s drinking had not worked and she and the children face fear and distress every weekend, she said. She wanted the order in the interests of a “safe and stable environment” for herself and the children.

“You’re entitled to that,” Judge Gerard Furlong told her, adding that what she described was a “terrible situation”. The children would not have understood the family home was in the couple’s joint names and it was not just their father’s house, he said.

When the judge said he would grant a protection order, the woman asked if the court could order her husband to stop drinking.

It was “not realistic” to put that into the order but, if the man demonstrated behaviour after drinking that put her and the children in fear for their safety, that would be a breach of the order, the judge said.

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The application was among several made ex parte (one side only represented) for emergency orders under the Domestic Violence Act before the court at Dolphin House on Friday.

A protection order was granted to a woman who said that after she began a relationship with a man earlier this year, he broke down before her, cried, told her he was suicidal, and asked her regularly for money to pay drug debts and for bills. He initially paid back some of the money she gave him, she said.

His behaviour escalated into him saying his life, and his family’s lives, were in danger due to drug dealers threatening him, she said. Later he sent her videos and voice notes threatening to use petrol bombs and to have her and her adult children stabbed.

She was “terrified” and gave him more money, several thousand euro, she said.

On another occasion, he tried to compel her to be sexually intimate with him as she kept refusing, she said. “He puts me in fear regularly and I am scared.”

In another application, a widow who said she is “in fear of my life” of her adult daughter got an interim barring order against her.

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She was so afraid, she had left her home and went to stay for two weeks with a friend, she said.

Since obtaining a protection order against her daughter in September, she has received threats and the ongoing mental abuse is getting worse, she said.

Her daughter smokes hash, has a criminal record, and “a bad temper” that she “will take out on anyone”, she said. “She has threatened to get me beaten up by people she knows; she also threatened to burn the house down – she already damaged my belongings including my clothes.”

She sits up late waiting for her daughter to go to bed because she is frightened that if she goes to bed first, her daughter might come into her bedroom.

“This has to stop before something serious happens to me,” she said. Her daughter was previously evicted from her own apartment over antisocial behaviour, the woman said.

“I want a barring order so I can live in peace.”

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Another mother who said her son uses alcohol and drugs and gets very violent and abusive, including leaving her daughter “bruised from head to toe”, got an interim barring order against him. She rang gardaí a few nights ago because he “smashed up the whole house” and had to be taken away in an ambulance, she said. “He’s on cocaine and pink stuff,” she said.

After she previously got a protection order against him, he got a job abroad but lost that after about a year due to his drinking and he returned home, the woman said.

A man who said he is afraid to bring his elderly ill mother home from hospital because of violent behaviour by his niece got a protection order against her. The judge said that order only protected the man as the law required his mother to bring her own application, or have the HSE seek one on her behalf.

The man said he recently moved in with his mother to become her carer as she has a number of serious medical conditions. His niece, who also lives there, is a crack cocaine user who is “very violent and is getting worse”, he said.

Gardaí were called to the house many times over the past two years over various incidents, and the house was “smashed up” by his niece who had knives and other weapons, he said.

His niece recently ran away from the house when he called gardaí over damage to the property, the main said.