left isolated in their house<\/a> and was told to remain inside.<\/p>\nSpeaking to The Irish Times, the woman recalled she was \u201calways watched\u201d through cameras installed at their Dublin home. The court heard these cameras fed back to her ex-husband\u2019s phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t allowed to talk to anyone,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
He also grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back at their Dublin home.<\/p>\n
At court her ex-husband admitted coercive control and assault causing harm. <\/p>\n
He received a 12-month sentence for coercive control and six months for assault to run concurrently. The sentences were suspended in full on strict conditions for two years.<\/p>\n
While respecting the court\u2019s decision and expressing satisfaction that her ex-husband now has a criminal conviction, she said: \u201cHe deserved more … so he would know how he ruined my life.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt destroyed my life, it destroyed my character, and now he\u2019s free.\u201d <\/p>\n
Now aged in her 30s, she said she had a \u201cwell-paying\u201d job in her home country before moving to Dublin in her late 20s be with her new husband. She was arranged to marry him in 2019.<\/p>\n
She recalled being confused as he became a \u201ctotally changed person\u201d.<\/p>\n
The man never called her by her name, she said, but instead used \u201cabusive\u201d words.<\/p>\n
She said she became a \u201cservant\u201d for him and some of his family members at times, cooking and cleaning, saying: \u201cHe always said he is my boss.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe always used his power of money.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember, lots of the time, I was hungry and I wasn\u2019t allowed to eat food.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was not allowed to leave the house \u201cwithout permission\u201d.<\/p>\n
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, recalled being cold in the winter months, but was not allowed to use the heating.<\/p>\n
The effect of the \u201ccruelty\u201d was still felt in her daily life, she said, detailing how she \u201ccan\u2019t concentrate\u201d and was \u201cafraid\u201d to leave her home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a very successful person before marriage, and now I don\u2019t have any aim for achievement,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m totally a broken person. I\u2019m alive, but inside I\u2019m like a dead person. I don\u2019t have any rage or any happiness. I don\u2019t have anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
She has been receiving support through counselling and from family members who now live in Ireland, she said.<\/p>\n
Coercive control, which became a criminal offence in 2019, is often referred to colloquially as \u201cintimate terrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n
Described as a persistent pattern of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, it can often manifest itself through economic control, physical violence or emotional and sexual abuse.<\/p>\n
More than 41,000 women reported such abuse to Women\u2019s Aid last year, the highest number of disclosures in its 50-year history.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Sarah Benson said there was a need for a detailed analysis of how coercive control was progressing through the courts, as judges could often be \u201cvery constrained\u201d in sentencing due to mitigating factors such as guilty pleas.<\/p>\n
Such an assessment could consider whether sentencing parameters should be increased beyond the maximum five years, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJudges are often left with very little to play with in terms of a sentence that might express through the courts just how severe and consequential the crime has been,\u201d she said. \u201cIt can feel, in some of these cases, to be quite a low sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A woman whose former husband received a suspended sentence after he installed cameras and restricted her food has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,24443,52,18,19,17,24442],"class_list":{"0":"post-30835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-circuit-court","10":"tag-dublin","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-women-s-aid"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30835","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=30835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}