Courts

‘A monster in our home’: Ex-garda led wife by her hair ‘like a dog’ during decade of abuse, court told

Mark Doyle (38) turned up at stepson’s school meeting in full Garda uniform to ‘quash’ any suggestion he was a domestic abuser, court heard

Former garda Mark Doyle (38) was described by his wife as 'a respected member of the community but a monster in our home'. Photograph: Paddy Cummins

Conor Lally
Thu Mar 14 2024 - 14:48

A former Garda member led his wife around by the hair “like a dog” during an 11-year campaign of domestic violence, a court heard.

Mark Doyle (38) was described by his wife as “a respected member of the community but a monster in our home”, who subjected her and her four children – two of whom she had with Doyle – to a litany of violent acts and coercive controlling behaviour.

Doyle, who was stationed in Dublin until resigning from the force last year, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to four charges of assault causing harm to Meav Doyle on dates between May 8th, 2010 and August 28th, 2019.

[ Former garda Mark Doyle sentenced to six years in prison over assaults on wife and stepsons ]

He further pleaded guilty to assault causing harm to a male on September 3rd, 2017 and assault causing harm to a second male on unknown dates between 2008 and 2009. Both of those young male victims are sons of Ms Doyle’s from a previous relationship.

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He is due to be sentenced by Judge Martin Nolan on Friday.

While Doyle pleaded guilty last October, on the day his three-week trial was due to commence, details of his offending were not set out until a sentencing hearing before the court on Thursday.

In her victim statements to gardaí, Ms Doyle said she eventually secured barring orders, sought the help of Women’s Aid, made a complaint to gardaí and was currently divorcing her abuser. However, the impact of the violence in the home had devastated her and her four children.

Their family was now one characterised by fear, anxiety, addiction and anger and of siblings “losing” each other. Their family home “can no longer be lived in because of all the memories ingrained in our heads”, she said.

Ms Doyle said when she met Mark Doyle, a former member of the Defence Forces who later joined the Garda, she was “ambitious, confident and outgoing” but by the time their relationship ended she was “a shell of myself” and “would jump at noises”.

She was still dealing with a tsunami of knock-on harmful effects of her marriage and its break-up. The constant battle to “cope” was “exhausting” and she and her children were now “constantly on the back foot”.

Doyle sought to “quash” any suggestion he was an abuser by arriving at a school meeting in full Garda uniform and in a patrol car, Ms Doyle told the court.

Dean Kelly SC, prosecuting, led Det Insp Adrian Kinsella of the Garda National Protective Services Bureau through the evidence in the case and the outcome of the Garda investigation. Much of the evidence was based on Ms Doyle’s statements and medical notes arising from her seeking treatment several times for injuries she sustained during the violence.

During some of the violence, which occurred between 2008 and 2019, she twice suffered perforated ear drums and was kicked and punched in the body and head, including when she was pregnant. One of her sons was punched by Doyle and another was shot in the backside by Doyle while playing with an airsoft gun, powered by a gas cylinder and loaded with pellets.

The court was told Doyle, who grew up Carlow in a family where his father was a violent alcoholic, met Ms Doyle in March 2007 when she was on a hen party in Carlow. Her previous relationship, with the father of her two eldest children, was ending at the time and she began a new relationship with Doyle later in 2007.

She soon became pregnant and she began sharing her home in Celbridge, Co Kildare with him in early 2008.

They had two children together and got married in 2012, by which time Doyle was a serving Garda member for three years, having left the Defence Forces and started Garda training in 2009. After qualifying as a Garda he was based in Cabra, Blanchardstown and Ronanstown Garda stations.

Though he was suspended from the force while being investigated, from late 2020, for domestic violence, he did not resign from the Garda until late last year just before pleading guilty to the offences.

Ms Doyle was initially happy in the relationship, believing it was “normal” and that her eldest sons liked her new partner, who they initially found “macho” as he engaged in boyish activities with them. However, at a family party in 2008 she first noticed Doyle was jealous and angry towards her as she greeted family members and friends at the event.

After she had the first of her two children with Doyle, he would “slag her over her weight gain”, the court was told. He also called her “lazy” as well as being very “regimental” in the way he demanded the house be run and Ms Doyle and her children were “always walking on eggshells” around him.

While he acted in a violent manner towards Ms Doyle during those early years, Doyle subjected her to a serious assault in May 2010, when he punched her in the head after they had returned home from a communion celebration for one of her sons in Milltown, south Dublin.

The punch knocked her off her feet with Doyle telling her: “You see what you made me do, you just won’t stop”.

Ms Doyle’s ear remained “sore and deaf” after she was punched. Upon seeking treatment at an on-call doctor service and at Naas General Hospital, she was diagnosed with a perforated ear drum.

However, after that assault the pair made attempts to make progress in their relationship, both with couple’s counselling and Doyle undergoing some sessions alone. But those efforts “fell apart” after Doyle ended his engagement, though not before the counselling led to a referral to the child and family welfare agency Tusla.

Doyle proposed marriage in 2010 and while Ms Doyle was reluctant, she agreed and they married in 2012. However, the previous year her oldest son, who was not yet a teenager at the time, “put it up to” an abusive Doyle on a family holiday in America. He was punched by his stepfather, who blamed the boy and did not apologise.

On another occasion, after enjoying a meal in a pub, Doyle began “slapping and hitting out at” his wife when they returned home. He then “grabbed her by the throat with both hands and was choking her”, the court was told.

Ms Doyle was trying to stop the attack by “kicking out at him” and “screaming”. As her throat was “sore” and “red and bruised” she attended her GP, with those notes, and others, available for gardaí investigating the case.

In 2012, as Ms Doyle’s grandmother was dying and she was under pressure, she felt Doyle was not supporting her. He punched her in the face in the bedroom of their home. “I was trying to get away from you,” he told her at the time. “You followed me, look what you made me do.”

The “general pattern” at that point was they would not speak to each other “for a few days” after a violent outburst or assault. Ms Doyle said periods of counselling appeared to help and she said of Doyle that “when he was up, he was great” and when she married him in 2012 she remembers being happy.

However, in early 2014, when she was pregnant with the couple’s second child, and Ms Doyle’s fourth child, they had a dispute after a family funeral in Tuam, Co Galway. Ms Doyle felt members of her husband’s family had been “rude and nasty” to her and he had not defended her.

During that row, Doyle kicked a kitchen chair – as part of an ongoing habit of damaging doors and furniture in their home in anger. When a leg came off the chair, he threw it at his wife.

She suffered a wound to her leg and after being treated at Mount Carmel Hospital in Dublin – where she told staff she “fell over the dog” – she told her husband she was pregnant and “this can’t go on”.

In March 2017, when Ms Doyle was using a knife to prepare food, Doyle accused her of waving it at him during a row. He called her “a scobe” and assaulted her. She fell to the ground and was kicked repeatedly along her left side. She was “screaming” for her eldest son but Doyle told her: “If anyone’s to blame, it’s you. You won’t wave a knife at me.”

Ms Doyle saw her arm was injured and though her husband brought her to hospital, she was “scared” going with him in the car as “the driving was too fast”. He had also earlier kicked her with boots on and taken a cup of tea from her that one of the children had prepared and thrown it against the wall.

During another assault, in November 2017, Doyle “whipped” his jacket at his wife, cutting her head. During Christmas 2018, after the family bought their Christmas tree, a dispute emerged over one of the children ordering additional items off the menu during a Chinese takeaway order. Doyle took a plate filled with food and threw it at the wall.

He then grabbed his wife by the hair and “pulled her up and down the hall ... like she was a dog”, upsetting the children, who witnessed the attack and urged Doyle to stop.

On another occasion, during an episode in their home, Ms Doyle was locked out of the house with no shoes on and her children were too scared to open the door. Ms Doyle had to contact her sister, who came to her aid.

In August 2019, Doyle slapped his wife so hard across the face that she suffered another perforated ear drum.

In September 2019, she applied for an interim barring order, also seeking help from Women’s Aid and then securing a full barring order before going to the Garda and making a complaint in the spring of 2020.

The court was also told of some of the violence perpetrated by Doyle on Ms Doyle’s two eldest sons, who are now young adults. This involved “twisting nipples” and banging their head off a table as well as pulling one of them out of bed by the hair.

Doyle was arrested in December 2020 and claimed he had been subjected to “controlling” behaviour for years. However, he declined to elaborate and said “everything has been twisted by the gardaí”.

The court heard he has not had any access for almost three years to the two children he had with Ms Doyle. However, he said he now accepted the harm caused by his crimes and had relinquished any claim to the family home or any bank accounts.

Conor Lally

Conor Lally

Conor Lally is Security and Crime Editor of The Irish Times

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