End of appeals by violent gang members brings relief to victim family

A family terrorised in their home by a violent gang who savagely beat the father and threatened to kill the children during a late-night burglary are “free for the first time” since the ordeal after learning that their attackers will remain behind bars.

But the Corcoran family from Co Tipperary had to hear that two of the seven-member gang — pictured right — who turned their lives upside down were having their 20-year sentences reduced by two years each after their cases were concluded at the Court of Criminal Appeal.

Mark and Emma Corcoran still live with both the physical and psychological scars from the terrifying night of November 21, 2013, when the gang came from Dublin to ransack their home, demanding access to a safe that did not exist.