The torture of one woman by a group of men who falsely imprisoned and assaulted her in a Dublin city flat involved “truly barbaric” violence, a judge has said.
When jailing five men who admitted those offences against Natalie Ennis for terms between 8½ and 14 years, Judge Pauline Codd said on Wednesday: “There has to be general deterrence to this type of torture.”
The “brutal, violent and sadistic” offending shows the ”evil associated with drug dealing and extensive criminality which underpins the drug trade”, the judge said.
During a three-hour ordeal last September at Henrietta House, Dublin 7, Ms Ennis (38) was beaten on the head and body with poles, punched, burned on the skin with a heated hammer and a makeshift blowtorch, cut with knives and subject to the “almost ritualistic, medieval” punishment of having her hair cut off, the judge said.
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Ms Ennis was taken to the flat after a false accusation about cocaine going missing from another apartment.
Judge Codd said it was “significant” Ms Ennis’s ordeal ended only when gardaí arrived at the flat. Ms Ennis had said she believed she would be “dead” if they had not arrived.
Ms Ennis spent three weeks in hospital after the assaults. Her injuries included a broken eye socket, broken cheekbone, broken nasal bone, broken elbow, laceration, burns and dislocated teeth. She required skin grafts, staples to her scalp, and later surgery to remove a disc in her back.
Her ability to live her daily life normally is affected, she is frightened when she sees young men and is “always looking over her shoulder”.
At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on Wednesday, the judge jailed Mark McMahon (55), his son Mark Keogh (33), and Braxton Rice (21), all of Henrietta House, Henrietta Place, Dublin 7, along with Sean Conroy (21), of Sillogue Road, Ballymun, and Kian Walshe (22), of Constitution Hill, Dublin 7, who had all pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and assault causing harm to Ms Ennis.
Other counts against each, relating to the production of articles in the course of an offence, were taken into consideration. All of the men were on bail at the time of the offence.
In deciding the jail terms, the judge balanced aggravating factors, including the serious nature of the assaults, against mitigatory factors, particularly the men’s guilty pleas, apologies to Ms Ennis and expressions of remorse.
All five were involved in drug use, four from an early age, of whom two, Rice and Conroy, were born into addiction, the court heard. Of the five, only Walshe had a stable family background.
The judge jailed Rice, described as “the ringleader”, for 14 years. Ms Ennis had said he had questioned her about the allegedly missing cocaine, hit her with a pole across her head and body and burnt her with a heated hammer and a makeshift blow torch.
Conroy, who the judge described as one of the “main movers” in what happened in the flat, was jailed for 12 years.
A 12-year-term was imposed on McMahon for reasons including it was his flat and he held a hatchet up to Ms Ennis’s face. McMahon had said he believed a “mob mentality” took over and he was ashamed to be associated with violence against a woman.
Jailing Keogh for nine years, the judge noted he was the only one to make admissions. He said he was in the flat for the last 30 to 60 minutes before gardaí arrived, was part of the group that assaulted Ms Ennis but he remembered very little.
Walshe was jailed for an effective 8½ years. His main role was to drive Ms Ennis to the flat, which placed his offending in the upper range, the judge said. He was on bail at the time for an offence that was later dismissed.
