Man threatened wife with axe on St Patrick’s Day

A woman whose husband threatened her and her daughter with an axe on St Patrick’s Day has been granted an interim barring order.

She told Dublin District Family Court on Thursday that he had started “shouting and giving out” on the evening of March 17th after she asked him for money to pay a credit-card bill.

When one of their daughters, both of whom are under 16, told him to give his wife the money the man told her to “mind her own f***ing business”. The daughter said she was sick of him being drunk and wetting the bed and began to record him on an iPad. The man grabbed the device and then grabbed an axe that the family use to chop wood for their stove.

The woman, who recently sought a separation, said he started to wave the axe close to her and her daughter’s faces and to use abusive language. “I thought he had snapped,” she told the court in her written statement.

The woman called the Garda after her husband locked her and their daughters in the house before leaving in his car. The woman’s sister collected her and the children that night. She said her husband was in the house when she returned two days later; he was crying, and he apologised to her and her daughter. He was not in court on Thursday.

The woman said she had been afraid to give the Garda a statement about her husband’s behaviour because of the way he might react.

Judge Gerard Furlong granted an interim barring order, banning the man from the family home, from any further violence or threats of violence, and from watching or being near the home. He set a full hearing, which the husband is expected to attend, for April.

Alcohol and cocaine case

Separately, a young woman was granted a protection order after her partner arrived at her home “full of drink and cocaine” and attacked her. Her written statement said that after she called him a scruff he punched her and beat her head against a wall, then went upstairs to take their young son.* The woman told the court that he also attacked her mother and uncle.

Judge Furlong granted a protection order, prohibiting the man from further violence or threats of violence, and set the full hearing for May. Judge Furlong said the order set out that the man “is not to stalk where you live”.

*This article was amended on Friday, March 23rd