The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
A JUDGE in Clare has refused to grant a domestic violence Protection Order to a man ‘with three wives’.
At the Family Law Court in Ennis, Judge Alec Gabbett told the man that he was refusing him the Protection Order against his wife as his evidence didn’t meet the threshold for the granting of a Protection Order.
At the outset of the case, Judge Gabbett said ‘you are the man with the three wives’ after telling the man that he knew about him as he had granted a Protection Order to the man’s wife living here last week in the same court.
In her successful Protection Order application, the woman said that she hasn’t had intimate relations with her husband since Summer 2021, “because of infidelity as he secretly got married to three or four ladies in Nigeria”.
The woman said her intimate relationship with her husband also ended due to his anger and aggressive behaviour that included death threats, sexual harassment, intimidation, threatening violence and verbal abuse.
In her application, she recalled recently sitting on her bed praying when her husband barged into the room.
She said: “I don’t feel comfortable or safe around him anymore.”
She said: “I told him to take his belongings out of the bedroom as there is no relationship between us anymore and we are sleeping in separate bedrooms.”
The woman said that she told her husband to leave “as he is disturbing our peace in the house and he walked up to me and touched me in the private area and I told him never to touch me there again or else I would call the Gardai”.
The woman said that the man “started insulting me and calling me awful names”.
She told the court, “He then walked out of the bedroom and came back and kicked the door open extremely hard and the chain on the door broke.”
She alleged her husband threatened to kill her “and demonstrated a slitting throat sign with his hand”.
Concerning his own Protection Order application, Judge Gabbett told the man “there are allegations and counter allegations here and that is the difficulty I have today”.
In his grounding application, the man said he is “always bullied and insulted in my home by my spouse”.
The man said that his wife told him that “she doesn’t need me anymore in my life and I should go back to Africa where I came from”.
Judge Gabbett said that it was understandable that the woman had thrown his things out of the house.
The man said that his wife recently “threatened my life and said she would throw me in the bin”.
Judge Gabbett asked: “How would she throw you in the bin?”
Judge Gabbett told the man that the hearing of his wife’s Safety Order, that will replace the temporary Protection Order, will be heard in court later this month.
