‘Zero remorse’: Man shared ex’s intimate images to social media and family before beating her with hairdryer in hotel

A drug addict who repeatedly beat, abused and controlled his ex-partner, and sent nude images of her to her family and social media followers has appeared before Mullingar Circuit Court in what Judge Keenan Johnson said was “without a doubt, the worst case of domestic violence I’ve seen”.

The man in his 20s, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim, showed “zero remorse” and “zero cooperation” when he told gardaí that the bloodstained towels and bedsheets left in a hotel room, in which he had brutally beaten her with a hairdryer and the top of a coffee table after he saw other men had liked her Instagram stories, must have been from the victim being on her period.

He appeared before a sitting of Mullingar Circuit Court, where he had previously pleaded guilty to assault causing harm and the sharing of the intimate images without her consent in February of last year.

Guilty pleas were also entered to nine more charges, including five counts of assault causing harm, criminal damage to the victim’s phone and threatening to kill or cause her serious harm on various dates between December 2020 and May 2024.

The court heard how, in February of last year, the accused believed his life was in danger due to a drug debt and he needed to get away from home for a few days. That resulted in him and the victim staying in a hotel in Dun Laoghaire between February 6 and 11.

During that stay, he took the victim’s social welfare so that he could purchase and consume a large quantity of ketamine, cocaine and tranax. On one of the nights, he awoke the woman by hitting her on the legs and shoulder with her phone after he had gone through it and seen that a number of other men had liked her Instagram stories.

Following that, he posted nude photos and videos of her on her social media accounts, as well as sending them to her father, her mother, her 13-year-old brother and her grandmother via WhatsApp.

In total he sent nine photos via WhatsApp, two photos via her Instagram, and two via her Snapchat story for everyone to see.

He then picked up the hairdryer in the room and began beating her in the face until it shattered to pieces, telling her, “you won’t see the light of day again”.

She was pleading for her life, the court heard, and thought he was going to kill her. When he realised he had broken the hairdryer, he pulled the wooden top off a round coffee table and used it “as a shield to push her back on the ground” before hitting her with it to the nose and chest. When she pleaded with him to “stop, you’re going to kill me”, he told her: “I don’t care, you would be worth prison time.”

A further beating came shortly afterwards when he came in from the balcony and caught her trying to get dressed so she could escape the room. He hit her so many times that she passed out.

A Garda told the court that after getting free of the abusive relationship, the injured party started to become more confident and reported a large number of previous incidents of abuse and assault.

She said the first four or five months of their relationship were okay but it then became “forceful”. He would take her phone away, push her, slap her all over her body, kick her in her sides and face. She took secret photos of her injuries on each occasion, which were of great evidential value to investigating gardaí.

She said if she gained weight, he would tell her she was “fat, a pig, that nobody would want her”. He would drive her to work every day and sit outside for eight hours watching her. He also isolated her from her friends, had control of her phone and knew her passwords. She went through so many phones because he would smash them if he found something he didn’t like. He made her delete her Snapchat account. He made her a new Instagram account, which he had the password for.

The court heard how he had “a different laugh when he did something cruel”, which scared her because she knew something bad was coming. The woman told gardaí she was terrified for her life and the lives of her family because of the physical, emotional and mental abuse she’d suffered.

The Garda outlined how, on April 15 and 16, the victim made further detailed statements of incidents, which took place between December 2020 and May 2024. She was just 16 years old and he was aged 19 when the violence began in December 2020, and incidents often occurred after drug use.

The woman told gardaí that, in May 2023, she found out she was pregnant with his child, and he forced her to get an abortion “or I will kick the child out of you”.

One of the more serious incidents occurred on the afternoon of January 9, 2024, after she woke him up at 1.20pm when he was still sleeping. On that occasion, he hit her on the back of the head with her own mobile phone, splitting her head open in two places. There was blood everywhere, the Garda told the court, and when he saw that, he panicked, took her phone and his phone and fled the scene, leaving her “bleeding and with no form of communication” and no way to call for help.

She managed to stumble out onto the road of the rural area in which they lived, and a woman who was walking with a dog came to help her. She received 10 staples to a laceration at the top of her head, and six staples to another laceration near the bottom of her head.

In her victim impact statement, the woman said her life “will never be the same” following the constant abuse from her ex-partner. She said she thought she loved him and that he loved her, but she realised he was just using her.

“I can’t move on. I live in constant fear of what he will do to me if he gets out of prison,” she said, adding that she suffers from PTSD, long-term physical injuries and trust issues.

The accused has no previous convictions and has been in custody on remand since February of last year. Judge Johnson remanded him in continuing custody to January 27, when the sentence hearing will continue.

“It’s not often I’m left speechless, but that is without a doubt the worst case of domestic violence I’ve seen in my 13 years on the bench,” he concluded.

Funded by the Courts Reporting Scheme