In life there are two governing forces: good and evil. The interplay between the two is what criminal law is built on at its core.
Victims of crimes – many of which are extremely violent in nature – have the right to expect that justice will be done in respect of them in our courts and that the punishments handed down to those who have caused them injury will be appropriately severe.
That should all be obvious enough, but it doesn’t always work like that as we saw today.
Mr Justice Tom O’Donnell fully suspended a three year sentence he had (almost in the same breath) given to a soldier who beat a young woman unconscious and inflicted serious injuries on her in the process in May 2022.
According to Judge O’Donnell’s own words, 22-year-old Cathal Crotty “took pride” in having left 24-year-old Natasha O’Brien with a broken nose, a severe concussion, severe swelling, bruising on her arms, shoulders, head, right upper thigh, left eye, cheek and jaw after unleashing an unprovoked attack on her as she was walking home after work.
It’s been several hours since news of this verdict broke and I have no doubt that many of you, like me, are still mulling it over in your heads trying to make it make sense.
But it just doesn’t.
For a man to beat a woman so severely (or at all) is something that is totally unacceptable and should render someone dead to the world in terms of their reputation so for Crotty to have avoided even a slap on the wrist for viciously assaulting miss O’Brien is pretty much unthinkable, and yet here we are.
He also went on to lie to Gardaí claiming that the woman he set upon had instigated the assault, having boasted on Snapchat about it in the hours following saying, “Two to put her down, two to put her out,” in reference to the beating he had given her.
The court heard how Crotty had grabbed the woman by the hair and punched her in the face continually until she lost consciousness.
There is a certain amount of public outrage every time a seemingly well deserved sentence is suspended, a sense that a criminal has escaped justice and might even be encouraged in regard to reoffending.
Of course part of criminal sentencing extends beyond the desire to punish an individual offender and is also supposed to act as a deterrent to others. I would argue that the suspending of Crotty’s sentence may go so far as to act as an incentive.
Judge O’Donnell said that if he sent Crotty to prison his career as a soldier would be effectively over. Yes, and rightly so in my opinion.
Is it a good idea to have someone like him in the army? A man who would boast about beating a woman unconscious?
The judge also said Crotty deserved “credit” for pleading guilty to the crime. Really? Does one deserve “credit” for admitting to something you initially lied about only after learning the actions were caught on CCTV? I’ll have to use my imagination there.
Crotty ran away from the unconscious Miss O’Brien after a passerby came on the scene. What if that person had not arrived? Would he have stopped beating the unconscious woman? Would she have survived his savagery?
“As I lay in the foetal position, and losing consciousness, he continued his relentless beating. My last conscious thought was, ‘he’s not stopping, I’m going to die’.
Those are the words of Miss O’Brien. She thought she was going to die.
“The physical injuries I sustained were devastating; a severe concussion, a broken nose, severe swelling, and bruising on both arms, shoulders, head, right upper thigh, left eye, cheek and jaw.
“I spent the following weeks and months attending hospital and doctor appointments, and due to persistent concussion symptoms I was deemed ‘high–risk’ for a brain bleed, and I received a battery of tests including a head CAT scan.” she said in her victim impact statement as reported by the Irish Times.
Imagine for a moment that Natasha O’Brien was your sister, your friend, your girlfriend, or your daughter.
How would you feel knowing that someone who beat her to a pulp and simply ran away would continue to have a career in the Irish Defence Forces.
The thought alone is disgusting. Cowards don’t belong in the army. And a coward like Crotty should be in jail for what he did.
How must Natasha O’Brien feel knowing the man who brutalised her that night walked free today and was simply ordered to pay her the paltry sum of €3,000. “That’s not justice,” she said outside the court.
There have been times in the past where judicial leniency has shocked and horrified me, and you I am sure, but this case has left me feeling shaken to the core.
If Cathal Crotty was my brother I would never be able to look at him again.