Row prompted by Covid-19 handbag fears ends in court appearance for Cork man

Cork courthouse on Washington Street

A 44-year-old man went on trial yesterday for putting his wife in fear by threatening her and her daughter but the accused said he was only concerned about the teenager touching a handbag due to Coronavirus concerns.

Judge Olann Kelleher heard the in camera case at Cork District Court yesterday.

The complainant said she was taken by ambulance for a chest X-ray as she had been sick for two weeks and her breathing was restricted on the day and she had concerns about Covid-19. Her husband collected her and brought her home at around 7.30pm on Sunday, March 29.

Mimi Linehan, defending, said the defendant’s wife was told not to bring her handbag on the ambulance so the defendant took it back into the house.

He said that he told his wife’s teenage daughter, for whom he has been a father since she was an infant, not to handle the bag because of Covid-19 concerns. He denied shouting at her or raising his voice.

The man’s wife said that it was not a row about the bag but that he shouted at her and her daughter about respecting the two younger children in the house. The complainant said he shouted and raised his hands. There was no allegation of physical contact.

Ms Linehan said the husband and wife had been separated but living in the same house for the past four years and that last year saw the first ever complaint of him breaching a protection order.

After hearing both sides, Judge Kelleher said, “I am not satisfied it reaches the threshold. I dismiss the charge.”

The charge brought by Garda Brian O’Connell alleged that the accused man contravened a protection order in that he allegedly put the applicant in fear by raising his hand to her daughter and threatening the applicant by shouting at her that he would throw both her and her daughter out of the house, contrary to the Domestic Violence Act.