A FORMER prison officer has been sentenced to eight years in jail with two years suspended after he admitted battering his wife on the head with a baseball bat in what a judge described as “a brutal and savage attack”.
Paul Morris (50) told his wife, Teresa, that he was going to kill her as he began hitting her around the head so hard with a junior baseball bat that he broke it. He then pummelled her with his fists.
A prison officer at the time, Morris, who has since resigned from the service, pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to assault causing serious harm to Ms Morris and to falsely imprisoning her at their home in Cork city on January 29th, 2010.
Ms Morris had told the court that the assault, which happened as she was working in the kitchen, was hugely traumatic, scarring her physically and psychologically.
“For an attack of such a violent nature to take place in your home, where you are meant to feel and be safe, is horrific and robs you of all your sense of security,” she said. “As a result of this attack, I now live a very fearful life.”
Ms Morris said it was mentally and physically exhausting to go through every day in a state of high alert and she was afraid to go to sleep at night for fear of another attack. She said she woke in terror because the nightmares were so “horrific and vivid”.
She suffered several fractures, had had a number of operations, including skin grafts, was facing two operations to repair damage to her scalp and continued to suffer pain from her injuries, she added.
The court heard Morris gave up drinking in 2007 after developing an alcohol dependency but he became obsessed by what he perceived was his wife’s drinking and they were going through a fractious period at the time of the attack.
Tom Creed SC, defending, said that on the morning of the attack, Morris saw a cigarette lighter bearing the name of an off-licence, he assumed his wife had been to the premises and he began attacking her.
Garda Orla Kenneally said Morris got a baseball bat from under the stairs and attacked his wife as she was pouring sour milk down the sink, hitting her head three times with the bat before it broke.
He then began hitting his wife with his fists and the broken bat. He kicked her and put up his hands to strangle her before he stopped, went out and called an ambulance, said Garda Kenneally.
Ms Morris climbed out a sitting-room window and raised the alarm with a neighbour who initially did not recognise her and refused to open her door because Ms Morris was so badly injured and bleeding so profusely.
Judge Patrick Moran said it was an appalling attack and he did not know if Morris – who did not give evidence – was remorseful but it was a very serious crime that had left his wife with horrific injuries.
He praised Ms Morris for her courage in giving evidence and relating her anxieties and fears in the wake of the attack. He sentenced Morris to eight years in jail with the final two suspended on condition of good behaviour.
Judge Moran also made it a condition of the suspension that Morris stay at least 500m from where Ms Morris lived or worked for 10 years after his release. He also ordered him to leave any location immediately if he encountered Ms Morris in that period.
