Man who menaced wife has suspended sentence overturned

A man who assaulted his wife and threatened to kill her and their four children in front of her has been sent to jail after the Court of Appeal found his wholly suspended sentence too lenient.

The 44-year-old man, whose details cannot be published to protect the identity of the children, had pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting his wife, causing her harm, in October 2012, and five separate counts of threatening to kill her and each of their four children at their rural Cork home on October 1st, 2015.

He was given a three-year sentence suspended in its entirety by Judge Gerard O’Brien on July 28th, 2017.

The Director of Public Prosecutions successfully sought a review of the man’s sentence on grounds that it was “unduly lenient” and he was accordingly sent to jail for 18 months by the Court of Appeal on Friday afternoon.

Giving judgment in the three-judge court, president of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said the man had come home one evening and started shouting at his wife that he would kill her. He grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against an old radio with a jagged aerial that cut her cheek.

The judge described the events surrounding the threats as a “truly awful offence”. The children were aged between two and 15-years-old at the time.

‘I will come for you’

Cork Circuit Criminal Court heard the man had said, “tonight is the night I’m going to kill the whole lot of ye. Actually I am going to do them (the children) first and you (the wife) can watch and then I will come for you.”

The court heard the man took one of his children into the sitting room and closed the door behind him. There was a glass panel in the door and his wife saw him putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders before saying, “I’m sorry”.

His wife managed to calm the situation to an extent and get the children out through a window.

The judge said victim impact reports from the man’s wife and eldest daughter made for “sad and distressing” reading.

He said the man ran a contracting business as well as a farm, though it seemed his wife was mainly involved in running the farm.

He said the man had long-standing mental health issues and was seeing a counsellor over an extended period. His wife reported that when he was seeing the counsellor and taking medication, life was brighter and things went quite well. But when he stopped going to counselling and stopped taking medication, he was a “very different person”.

After the events of October 2015, the judge said the man spent some five weeks as a hospital inpatient which was marked by some improvement. He was back in the family home for a period. However, early in 2016 there was a further deterioration and the relationship broke down at that stage.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Imelda Kelly, submitted that the suspension of the sentence in its entirety fell foul of other cases given the circumstances of these “very serious offences”.

The judge said these were “very serious” offences which had to be met with a custodial sentence.

Three-year term

He said three years’ imprisonment with the final 12 months suspended would not have been inappropriate. However, conscious of the fact that time had moved on and that the court was sentencing somebody who felt they had “escaped” a sentence, the court imposed a sentence of three years with final 18 months suspended.

The judge, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the court would also restructure the sentence to include a 12-month concurrent term for the assault on his wife in 2012, which had merely been taken into consideration in the Circuit Court.

The man was required to enter into a good behaviour bond, to maintain contact with mental health services and to have no contact with his wife or children for three years unless expressly invited. The man undertook to be so bound.