{"id":94508,"date":"2025-09-30T10:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T10:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94508\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T10:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T10:46:12","slug":"womens-safety-advocate-punched-in-the-face-on-dublin-street-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/94508\/","title":{"rendered":"women\u2019s safety advocate punched in the face on Dublin street \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Dublin councillor who campaigns on women\u2019s safety in the capital was punched in the face by a man in a random attack when she was walking down a busy inner-city street. <\/p>\n

Cat O\u2019Driscoll, a Social Democrats<\/a> councillor for Cabra-Glasnevin on Dublin City Council, is chairwoman of the council\u2019s women\u2019s committee. As a local politician, she has been campaigning on the issue of women\u2019s safety in Dublin. <\/p>\n

Ms O\u2019Driscoll told The Irish Times that she was recently punched by a complete stranger outside Kavanaghs The Temple on Dorset Street shortly before 6pm on Wednesday, September 17th. <\/p>\n

Ms O\u2019Driscoll said she had been walking along the street with her headphones on. She was on her way to a canvass at the time. Her gaze was down towards the street, so she did not see the man coming towards her. <\/p>\n

\u201cI hadn\u2019t even made eye contact with this guy, it was so out of the blue,\u201d she said. \u201cThis punch just came across the side of my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Dublin is a safe city despite alleged attack on NFL player, says Jim O\u2019CallaghanOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cHe whacked me so hard on the side of my head that my glasses flew off … If I was a bit more fragile … I would have fallen, but I was able to catch myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

The man\u2019s palm had been slightly open, and Ms O\u2019Driscoll remembers the sensation of his fingers dragging through her hair after he hit her. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t know people putting their hands in my hair would upset me so much,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe hit me as he passed me, and then he kept on walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms O\u2019Driscoll said the man said something to her immediately after the attack, but she couldn\u2019t hear. She only saw him from behind as he strode away from her. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I was in shock. I was in so much shock, I didn\u2019t even know how to respond. I know I called him an asshole; that was my gut instinct.\u201d<\/p>\n

The street was very busy at the time, with many people making their way home from work. But nobody came to her aid or to check on her after the attack, she said. <\/p>\n

One woman who was passing in a car rolled down her window and told Ms O\u2019Driscoll to call the garda\u00ed, but when the traffic started to move, the woman drove on. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo one came over to be like, \u2018Are you okay?\u2019 … That was another layer to it that really shocked me.\u201d<\/p>\n

She reported the incident, and said that CCTV from the street will now be analysed by garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I don\u2019t know how long it takes them to get CCTV, or how easy it is to identify people,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\"\"How safe is Dublin city? <\/p>\n

Last week, over the course of 24 hours, two men were stabbed and seriously injured in separate incidents in Dublin city centre. <\/p>\n

She said it wasn\u2019t until the next day that she digested what had happened. She had a large bump on her head, but it didn\u2019t bruise. <\/p>\n

Ms O\u2019Driscoll does not know if she was randomly attacked because she is a woman, or if her attacker had targeted her because of her politics. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who I\u2019ve told about this have been so supportive, but some of them have asked me, or one in particular asked me, \u2018Would you leave politics over this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI had forgotten that this guy might know me because my face was on poles last year. You know, I\u2019m in the media the odd time … My face is out there, in places. So was that part of it: did he know I was a councillor, or was I just a woman to him?<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t make that judgment, but it makes me concerned about women … and it makes me concerned about women councillors out and about, and other politicians.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t leave politics over it, but if it had happened at a political event? Maybe I\u2019d think about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the attack, she thinks about it when she is walking in the city on her own. \u201cIs he around? Because I won\u2019t notice that, I won\u2019t recognise him from the front,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWill I recognise him? Or will he recognise me? Those intrusive thoughts come into my head quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms O\u2019Driscoll said the incident has made her \u201cmore determined\u201d to campaign on women\u2019s safety in the city, but has also made her more conscious of the possible prevalence of under-reported, random attacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am wondering: is this happening to women and girls around the city more often? And we\u2019re not talking about it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Dublin councillor who campaigns on women\u2019s safety in the capital was punched in the face by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,52,784,18572,18,13,14,2215,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,18578,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-94508","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-dublin","12":"tag-dublin-city-council","13":"tag-dublin-1","14":"tag-eire","15":"tag-featured-news","16":"tag-featurednews","17":"tag-for-you","18":"tag-headlines","19":"tag-ie","20":"tag-ireland","21":"tag-latest-news","22":"tag-latestnews","23":"tag-main-news","24":"tag-mainnews","25":"tag-news","26":"tag-social-democrats","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94508","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=94508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}