A MAN who threatened to throw acid in his wife’s face and to petrol bomb her mother’s house has been jailed by a Limerick court.
The man – who cannot be named for legal reasons as the case involves domestic violence – breached a safety order on two occasions, on July 4 and 7, making the threats, Judge Patricia Harney heard.
The man’s solicitor, Sarah Ryan, told the Limerick District Court that the two had been in a long-term relationship.
“He describes the lady as his wife, although I’ve not see any civil registration certificate,” Ms Ryan said.
“He didn’t accept the relationship was at an end.”
Attending the hearing via video link, the man pushed in to say: “She is my wife.”
“When I was serving a (prison) sentence, she was visiting me the whole time – then when I got out she wanted nothing more to do with me.”
Judge Harney was told that the man has 69 previous convictions, including four for breach of a domestic order involving the same woman, cruelty to animals, assault, violent disorder, obstruction of a Garda, theft, trespass, and handling stolen goods.
After his protestations that the injured party had freely visited him in jail, Judge Harney warned him that “she is free to contact you whenever she wants – you are the one who has breached a safety order and you are the one with 69 previous convictions”.
“You’re very slow on the uptake,” she added.
Describing the man’s threats as “extremely serious,” Judge Harney said she was taking the man’s guilty plea into consideration and imposing two jail sentences of five months on each count of breaching the order, to run consecutively, meaning the will serve 10 months in total.
“And you will not get early release on a domestic violence sentence,” the Judge told him.
