A secondary schoolteacher has claimed she “screamed out in agony” after a male Garda allegedly twisted her arm until it broke following her arrest after an altercation on a night out.
Denise Callinan, at the time a 23-year-old physical education and biology teacher, told the High Court she was subjected to a 30-minute-long interrogation by five gardaí at Millstreet Garda station in Galway city in the early hours of October 19th, 2019.
Callinan has sued the Garda Commissioner seeking damages for the alleged assault at the station.
Her civil action opened before Judge Tony O’Connor and a jury on Tuesday.
Callinan told the court she was arrested by two male gardaí after getting into a “heated” argument with her brother near Eyre Square at about 3am on the date in question.
She said having been taken to Millstreet station, she was asked “incessant questions” in the reception area regarding her brother’s whereabouts and felt the questioning gardaí “were getting furious at me as they felt I had information that I didn’t have. Then I was approached by a male Garda from behind. He grabbed my left wrist and twisted it higher and higher while shouting: ‘Tell us! Tell us! Tell us!
“I could tell something had happened as I screamed out in agony and was in severe pain. I knew it was broken, I played sport for years. I knew that this man has broken my arm, I was hysterical,” she said.
The court heard a subsequent X-ray found she had suffered a spiral fracture of her left humerus.
Callinan said she had suffered from severe mental health problems after the alleged assault, culminating in “a pretty severe incident of self-harm” following a prolonged period of sleeplessness in September 2020.
Callinan acknowledged she had pleaded guilty to resisting arrest on the night of October 19th, saying she did so to “protect my career”. She said what had happened that night was “not my finest hour” and that she regretted resisting arrest, but had done so as she felt like she “was being attacked”.
When it was put to her that she had said to her brother at the time, “you hurt my arm”, she replied, “that is not true at all”.
She was told the gardaí present had insisted that she was not thrown on the ground when arrested. In response, she said: “I have very good co-ordination and would not just fall to the ground.”
Informed that a Garda witness would be testifying that, while in a cell at Millstreet, she shouted at her brother in an adjacent cell “you broke my arm”, Callinan replied, “he was saying, ‘you broke my sister’s arm, how could you?’”
Put to her that all of the gardaí present on the night would say she was not thrown into the cell after the alleged arm-breaking incident, Callinan said, “of course they’re all going to agree, they’re one big family”.
The trial continues.