'Up against a monster': Garda coercive control case important for other survivors

Paul Moody arriving at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for his sentence hearing. Picture: Collins Courts

A coercive control conviction, in which a serving garda terrorised a woman with cancer almost to the point of suicide, is an important case to encourage other survivors to speak out, experts have said.

A 43-year-old woman told Dublin Circuit Criminal Court how her former partner Paul Moody, a serving garda, told her the only reason he had visited her while in hospital was to “watch you bleed to death”.

She was giving her victim impact statement in the sentence hearing of 42-year-old Moody who harassed, threatened, assaulted, stole from, and controlled the woman for more than four years after they met online in 2017.

The court heard that the man sent the woman over 30,000 messages over those years and in one 14-hour period, in July 2018, sent her 652 messages, amounting to one message every 90 seconds.

The messages were described in court as threatening, vile and abusive. 

In one message he described her as being “riddled with cancer”, in another, while she was on holiday without him, he said he hoped she would “get raped and bleed”.

Judge Martin Nolan noted that the maximum sentence available to the court for the offence is five years. 

Behaviour at highest end of offence

He said Moody's behaviour was at the highest end of the offence but the court had to take Moody's guilty plea into consideration and he reduced a five-year headline sentence to three years and three months.

The victim in the case told the court: “I was not just fighting cancer. I was up against a monster who would take away any chance I had of surviving." 

She said she couldn’t battle cancer and a war with him. 

I always thought if I could get better, I could get away from him. I believed he was going to kill me so many times.

Sarah Benson, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said the case is “extremely important” to encourage victims to come forward.

“We have had women being supported through our services who have been subjected to abuse by a current or former partner who may be a guard and that can have a chilling effect,” said Ms Benson.

“They may feel that access to justice or making a complaint could be more difficult." 

Sarah Benson, CEO of Women’s Aid, said the case is “extremely important” to encourage victims to come forward. Picture: Paul Sharp

"We think it’s important to see An Garda Síochána as an institution support prosecutions and sanctions on members, particularly for these insidious crimes of coercive control and domestic violence, which could encourage survivors and victims.”

Ms Benson said the death of Sarah Everard in England, who was abducted, raped, and murdered by a serving police officer, led An Garda Síochána to examine its own policies and procedures regarding domestic and gender-based violence within the force.

A whole-of-community response, across all workplaces, is necessary to create a zero-tolerance culture for domestic violence, sexual harassment, and all forms of gender-based violence, said Ms Benson.

Noeline Blackwell, chief executive of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said it is important for people to hear gardaí say, as they did in this case, that coercive control will be prosecuted whoever the abuser is.

Although the victim did not bring her complaints to gardaí, a separate investigation by gardaí into a complaint the perpetrator, Paul Moody, brought against a relative of the woman, sparked concerns that there was an abusive relationship. 

Gardaí then made contact with Moody’s partner and the investigation stemmed from there.

Difficult to identify coercive control

“In the case of coercive control, it’s particularly difficult to identify, particularly because people themselves, the victims of crime, don’t know that it is a crime because it’s new," Ms Blackwell said. 

"But also it’s so hard to describe a pattern of abusive behaviour, it’s much easier to describe one incident.”

Ms Blackwell said a person’s “respectability” in a community is no guarantee for those closest to them that they will not be subjected to domestic or sexual abuse.

“This so-called respectability has hidden so many crimes — in the Church, in education, in the upholders of the law in this case.”

It is a reminder to us that so-called respectable people can be entirely unrespectable in their ways of operating in private and can sometimes feel that they can get away with it because of their ‘respectability’ label.

The first conviction for coercive control was in February 2020 after the Domestic Violence Act 2018, which introduced the offence, commenced in January 2019.

The maximum sentence at the circuit court is five years but if it is prosecuted at the District Court, the maximum sentence is 12 months.

Ms Blackwell said yesterday’s sentence was “significant”.

“It is still one of the early convictions for coercive control. It’s a really instructive case when you see how patterns of behaviour, the level of abuse, the intensity of the abuse, that someone can suffer and still feel ashamed and not want to say it.”

•  If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.