News
Man beat and burnt his 16-year-old bride with poker
A 19-year-old man used violence to control his 16-year-old wife’s every move and on one occasion gave her the option of having a belt put around her neck or get burnt with a poker.
She feared for her life and opted to be burnt, holding out her arm for the barbaric punishment.
The arranged marriage in January 2013, between Dean Maughan, who was 19 at the time, and Annalise Conroy, who had then just turned 16, was marred with bullying and violence from the outset, Galway District Court heard this week.
Maughan, with more recent addresses at 77 Innishannagh Park, Newcastle, Galway, and 5 Townspark, Cavan, denied assaulting Ms. Conroy causing her harm when the couple lived in a rented house at Station Road, Oranmore on December 15, 2015. He also denied assaulting her at the same address on March 16 last year.
He told the court he was forced to marry Ms Conroy. He said he never loved her but ‘respected’ her because she had given him a son.
Imposing sentences totalling 12 months on the accused, Judge Mary Fahy said he had treated his wife like a possession, of no value other than to produce a son. His attitude, and the attitudes of others like him in our society, need to be seriously re-educated, the judge said.
A tearful Ms Conroy gave evidence she had just turned 16 a few days before when she married Maughan in January 2013.
She recalled fearing for her life during specific violent incidents which occurred throughout their brief marriage.
The pretty, petite victim said their son was just a few months old when her husband became angry and attacked her on December 15, 2014.
“He gave me a choice to either have a belt put around my neck or hold out my hand and have it burnt.
“When given the option, I put my hand out and he burnt me on the hand and then he burnt me on the leg too. He put the poker in the fire first and then burnt me,” she sobbed
She said she was in a lot of pain but he would not allow her go to the doctor or get any treatment for her injuries.
“He wouldn’t let me go to the doctor. He was very controlling. He wouldn’t let me contact my family. I had a small, black phone when I met him first but he broke it.
“He didn’t want me to have any contact with my family or his family. He wanted me to disown my family.
“My sister, who had special needs, died and when I came back from the funeral in Ballinrobe, he gave me a very bad beating.
“I was afraid to tell my family. I was afraid he would kill me and my baby would have no mother.
“Any time we had an argument, he beat me. I was not allowed a phone. I was not allowed to talk to anyone. He was controlling me,” she sobbed.
“It had gone to the stage where he was putting a belt around my neck. I was very afraid. He was always threatening he was going to kill me. He would regularly use the belt to hit me. I didn’t want to tell my family. They had enough to deal with after my sister dying,” she added.
Ms Maughan said the second assault occurred after she returned from the shop on March 16 last year.
Maughan, she said, had been in bed before she left but when she returned he became very, very angry with her because the electricity meter had run out of coins.
“He said it was my fault the electricity had gone. He got very, very angry with me and he started scraping my face and neck with his nails.
“If I fought back, I knew he would hurt me even more. He hit me on the arms and legs with the belt. I was screaming in pain,” she said.
Maughan had rang his mother looking for money shortly before this and the assault stopped when he heard her car pulling up outside.
“I knew I had to leave that day. It had to stop,” Ms Conroy said quietly.
Maughan locked his wife out of the house and refused to give her their baby son.
His mother and father pleaded with him in through the kitchen window to hand out their grandson, but he refused.
Garda Michelle Berry gave evidence she arrived at the house and tried to reason with the accused in through the window but he was “arrogant, antagonistic and unhelpful”.
She became concerned for the baby’s welfare and called the Regional Response Unit, who happened to be in the area, to come and break down the front door to gain entry to the house.
Maughan opened the door and handed over the baby to his wife when the Response Unit arrived a short time later.
Bully husband tells court
he was forced into marriage
Dean Maughan told the court he was forced into marriage by the girl’s parents. “It was an arranged marriage. I didn’t want to marry the girl. I met her by texting her on Blackberry messaging and I brought her to Galway for the Volvo Ocean Race.
“Her parents reckoned we had run away and they wanted us to marry,” he said.
Maughan denied burning her with a poker in December, 2014. “I was after paying for an expensive holiday to Orlando.
“I brought her to Turkey a couple of months after we married, then in 2014, I brought her to Orlando for Valentine’s Day,” he said.
“I told her family from day one that I never loved her, but I have respect for her because she is the mother of my child,” he said.
Maughan said they had a chimney fire in their rented house in October, 2014 and he went to the St. Vincent de Paul and successfully applied for a fill of home heating oil.
“Were you not embarrassed? You were able to go to Florida and Turkey on holidays and yet you had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul, which is there for people in need?” Judge Mary Fahy asked Maughan.
He told her he had a gambling problem and was losing “big money” on bets.
“But you had money for holidays and no money for oil,” Judge Fahy observed.
Maughan claimed the marks and scars on his wife’s body were old and he said his wife had been annoyed with him because her family had told her he was having an affair with a 50-year-old relative.
In reply to Inspector Brendan Carroll, Maughan said he couldn’t have hit his wife with a belt as he didn’t own one.
“I don’t wear a belt. As you can see, I’m very particular about my clothes,” Maughan said, caressing his blue, fitted blazer and jeans.
Judge Fahy said she had heard enough.
She said the victim was very young.
“She was only 16 when she got married. She was a child, but that is part of the Traveller culture.
“It’s unfortunate she didn’t reveal to her own family what was happening, but then her own family were going through the trauma of losing her sister and she says she didn’t want to burden them.
“But we hear, all through our society, and not just in relation to the Travelling community – it’s in all strata of society – that women are assaulted and abused and, in some instances, it’s treated by the Gardaí as just domestic violence, but in this case thankfully, the Gardaí treated it as seriously as possible and brought charges.
“This man was a bully, totally controlling his wife. She had no phone, She was bossed around the place. The only reason he stayed with her was because of the child. He said he never loved her. It’s very, very serious.
“What’s most serious, apart from the assaults, is his attitude towards her.
“He brought her to Turkey and to Orlando, treating her like she was a possession, of no value other than to produce a son.
“Anyone in our society with that attitude needs to be re-educated in a very serious manner and he needs to be re-educated too,” Judge Fahy said.
She then sentenced Maughan to six months in prison for the first assault and imposed a consecutive six-month sentence on him for the second attack.
Leave to appeal the sentences was granted.
Judge Fahy imposed a condition should Maughan appeal the sentences, that he was to make no contact with the complainant or any member of her family by any means.
Ms Conroy, who was accompanied in court by her father, cried with relief and hugged Garda Michelle Berry who had helped her get her child back.
Significant state investment is required to address ‘shocking’ inequalities that leave cancer patients in the West at greater risk of succumbing to the disease.
A meeting of Regional Health Forum West heard that survival rates for breast, lung and colorectal cancers than the national average, and with the most deprived quintile of the population, the West’s residents faced poorer outcomes from a cancer diagnosis.
For breast cancer patients, the five-year survival rate was 80% in the West versus 85% nationally; for lung cancer patients it was 16.7% in the west against a 19.5% national survival rate; and in the West’s colorectal cancer patients, there was a 62.6% survival rate where the national average was 63.1%.
These startling statistics were provided in answer to a question from Ballinasloe-based Cllr Evelyn Parsons (Ind) who said it was yet another reminder that cancer treatment infrastructure in the West was in dire need of improvement.
“The situation is pretty stark. In the Western Regional Health Forum area, we have the highest incidence of deprivation and the highest health inequalities because of that – we have the highest incidences of cancer nationally because of that,” said Cllr Parsons, who is also a general practitioner.
In details provided by CEO of Saolta Health Care Group, which operates Galway’s hospitals, it was stated that a number of factors were impacting on patient outcomes.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
On the eve of completing his 150th marathon, an odyssey that has taken him across 53 countries, Loughrea’s Marathon Man has announced that he is planning to hang up his running shoes.
But not before Jarlath Fitzgerald completes another ten races, making it 160 marathons on the occasion of his 60th birthday.
“I want to draw the line in 2026. I turn 57 in October and when I reach 60 it’s the finishing line. The longer races are taking it out of me. I did 20 miles there two weeks ago and didn’t feel good. It’s getting harder,” he reveals.
“I’ve arthritis in both hips and there’s wear and tear in the knees.”
We speak as he is about to head out for a run before his shift in Supervalu Loughrea. Despite his physical complaints, he still clocks up 30 miles every second week and generally runs four days a week.
Jarlath receives injections to his left hip to keep the pain at bay while running on the road.
To give his joints a break, during the winter he runs cross country and often does a five-mile trek around Kylebrack Wood.
He is planning on running his 150th marathon in Cork on June 4, where a group of 20 made up of work colleagues, friends and running mates from Loughrea Athletics Club will join him.
Some are doing the 10k, others are doing the half marathon, but all will be there on the finishing line to cheer him on in the phenomenal achievement.
Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.
From the Galway City Tribune – An impassioned plea for a ‘masterplan’ that would guide Galway City into the future has been made in the Dáil. Galway West TD Catherine Connolly stated this week that there needed to be an all-inclusive approach with “vision and leadership” in order to build a sustainable city.
Deputy Connolly spoke at length at the crisis surrounding traffic and housing in Galway city and said that not all of the blame could be laid at the door of the local authority.
She said that her preference would be the provision of light rail as the main form of public transport, but that this would have to be driven by the government.
“I sat on the local council for 17 years and despaired at all of the solutions going down one road, metaphorically and literally. In 2005 we put Park & Ride into the development plan, but that has not been rolled out. A 2016 transport strategy was outdated at the time and still has not been updated.
“Due to the housing crisis in the city, a task force was set up in 2019. Not a single report or analysis has been published on the cause of the crisis,” added Deputy Connolly.
She then referred to a report from the Land Development Agency (LDA) that identified lands suitable for the provision of housing. But she said that two-thirds of these had significant problems and a large portion was in Merlin Park University Hospital which, she said, would never have housing built on it.
In response, Minister Simon Harris spoke of the continuing job investment in the city and also in higher education, which is his portfolio.
But turning his attention to traffic congestion, he accepted that there were “real issues” when it came to transport, mobility and accessibility around Galway.
“We share the view that we need a Park & Ride facility and I understand there are also Bus Connects plans.
“I also suggest that the City Council reflect on her comments. I am proud to be in a Government that is providing unparalleled levels of investment to local authorities and unparalleled opportunities for local authorities to draw down,” he said.
Then Minister Harris referred to the controversial Galway City Outer Ring Road which he said was “struck down by An Bord Pleanála”, despite a lot of energy having been put into that project.
However, Deputy Connolly picked up on this and pointed out that An Bord Pleanála did not say ‘No’ to the ring road.
“The High Court said ‘No’ to the ring road because An Bord Pleanála acknowledged it failed utterly to consider climate change and our climate change obligations.
“That tells us something about An Bord Pleanála and the management that submitted such a plan.”
In the end, Minister Harris agreed that there needed to be a masterplan for Galway City.
“I suggest it is for the local authority to come up with a vision and then work with the Government to try to fund and implement that.”
Families queue up for school’s offer of free house
West has lower cancer survival rates than rest
Galway minors continue to lay waste to all opponents
Gardaí and IFA issue a joint appeal on summer road safety
Marathon Man plans to call a halt – but not before he hits 160 races
