{"id":293574,"date":"2026-01-20T07:53:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T07:53:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293574\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T07:53:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T07:53:07","slug":"ill-handcuff-myself-to-leinster-house-if-he-doesnt-lose-his-job-says-ex-wife-of-garda-who-assaulted-her-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/293574\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019ll handcuff myself to Leinster House if he doesn\u2019t lose his job,\u2019 says ex-wife of garda who assaulted her \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A decade after Margaret Loftus disclosed to Garda<\/a> colleagues she had suffered domestic violence at the hands of her ex-husband, garda Trevor Bolger, she still fears he may not lose his job. <\/p>\n

She has pledged to handcuff herself to the gates of Leinster House if he is not dismissed from the force. <\/p>\n

Last Friday, Bolger (48) was sentenced to three months, fully suspended, after being convicted of assaulting Ms Loftus back in 2012, when they were both garda\u00ed. The assault was contrary to Section 2 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, which is regarded as an attack on the lower end of the scale.<\/p>\n

Ms Loftus, who has since left the Garda, said she was devastated when told Bolger had agreed to plead guilty to that charge. It was an arrangement that meant other, more serious, charges would not go to trial, namely a threat to kill and coercive control.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started crying, I got really upset,\u201d she said when members of the investigation team told her about the plea to the lesser charge. \u201cI told them I found it really insulting. But in the next breath they told me I didn\u2019t have a choice, that the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions<\/a>] had already accepted it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Loftus said some of her contacts, who have knowledge of criminal cases in the legal system, have told her they know of Garda members who did not lose their jobs after being convicted of a Section 2 assault.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of them asked me was I prepared for the possibility he may not lose his job,\u201d she told The Irish Times. \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t lose his job I will personally handcuff myself to the gates of Leinster House. It\u2019s an absolute national scandal that he can do all that he\u2019s done and think he\u2019ll be allowed to go back, and put on the [Garda] uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n

Garda Headquarters will conduct an internal process, following Bolger\u2019s conviction, to determine his future, which could include being dismissed.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Garda\u00ed investigated how Irish Times reporter learned of domestic violence charge against memberOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\"TrevorTrevor Bolger arriving at the Central Criminal Court last summer. Photograph: Collins Courts <\/p>\n

The charge Bolger was convicted of arises from his assault of Ms Loftus in her childhood family home in Co Mayo in October 2012, which ended their marriage. When she began disclosing inside the Garda that she was the victim of domestic abuse, she said it seemed impossible to get a substantive investigation commenced because the person she was accusing was also a garda.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Justice was never going to be delivered\u2019: Woman\u2019s Garda ex-husband avoids jail for assaultOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

However, after a long period of frustration, she effectively compiled a case file herself. She wrote her own witness statement and in 2018 sent it to the Garda Commissioner\u2019s office. Then assistant commissioner Pat Leahy picked up on it and things finally started moving.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next day they had a Garda investigation team down to my house,\u201d she said. Bolger was eventually charged in late 2019 and has been suspended from his job, <\/b>apparently <\/b>on full pay, as the case has taken years to reach a conclusion in court.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe terrorised me, and he was left there and allowed to flourish within the organisation tasked with protecting me, and that I worked for myself,\u201d she said of Bolger being promoted to the rank of detective and issued with a firearm. This happened in the period after she had made her allegations and before he was suspended.<\/p>\n

She also made a protected disclosure to the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Ombudsman Commission \u2013 the Garda oversight body which has since become Fiosr\u00fa<\/a>. She outlined what she sees as the failure of the Garda to tackle domestic violence more effectively and concerns around how her allegations were investigated and, specifically, how long it took for an inquiry to start. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey had to do an investigation in secret and they had to hand-pick a few key people to do that investigation,\u201d she said. There were concerns that information about the inquiry would be leaked to her ex-husband, she added. \u201cThey [the investigators] weren\u2019t allowed to tell anyone they were doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, Bolger was able to use discovery orders in court to secure \u201cinformation about every inch of my life\u201d including the protected disclosure she had made. He did so while on legal aid. The case went to court 58 times between Bolger\u2019s first appearance in 2019 and the sentencing last Friday. Ms Loftus said her ex-husband\u2019s ability to secure so much information about her through the discovery process during that period was very oppressive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would not be able for this journey again,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was allowed continue to exert power and control over my life right up until the end, to the point my victim-impact statement was censored by him beforehand. I had to take out parts of that victim-impact statement that he wasn\u2019t happy with <\/b>on the day.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that section related to her apologising to her own family \u201cfor bringing him into their lives\u201d as \u201cthey had borne the brunt of his behaviour every bit as I had\u201d. In the censored section she also thanked her family for standing by her \u201cand that I was forever grateful for all they\u2019d done for me\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen I had to sit in court on Friday and listen to copious amounts of references. They were about what an amazing person this man was. And how he was so great at training the under-12 girls\u2019 teams and how they just couldn\u2019t believe he was before the courts for these things, and wasn\u2019t he great to tell them that. And this man is still a guard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A decade after Margaret Loftus disclosed to Garda colleagues she had suffered domestic violence at the hands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":293575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,18,13,14,5650,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-293574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-an-garda-siochana","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fiosru","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115926348826382600","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/293575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}