The Irish Examiner view: Attack and sentence that shocked the nation
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It’s an indicator of something unprecedented when the as it did this week, prefaces an online news report with the trigger warning that some readers may find the details upsetting.
The account of how a 22-year-old serving Irish soldier — Cathal Crotty, of Parkroe Heights, Ardnacrusha, Clare — beat a young woman unconscious in Limerick city centre, and then boasted about it on social media has shocked many people.
After an alcohol-fuelled attack, Crotty told friends on Snapchat: “Two to put her down, two to put her out.”
And what has shocked people even more is that Crotty has walked free from court, after obtaining a fully suspended sentence following pleas from his superior officer at Sarsfield Barracks, Limerick.
Commandant Paul Togher, gave evidence that Crotty was an “exemplary”, “courteous”, “professional”, and “disciplined” officer. When asked for his reaction to the evidence of the attack, Commandant Togher said he was “exceptionally disappointed and surprised”.
It was, in his opinion, “very out of character” for the defendant. Crotty, as a soldier, “is expected to keep people safe”.
Disappointment is perhaps the least of the emotions which has to be applied to this case, which was heard in the same week that Women’s Aid — in its annual report — said that it received a record 40,000 disclosures of domestic abuse, a level it described as “staggering”.
The court heard that the victim, Natasha O’Brien, aged 24, of North Circular Rd, Limerick, was on her way home with a female friend after completing a shift at a pub, when Crotty attacked her after she had “politely” asked him to stop shouting homophobic slurs at other people in the street.
He grabbed her by the hair, punched her to the ground, and continued punching her as she lost consciousness. She suffered a broken nose and bruising, and has endured nightmares and panic attacks since. She told the judge she thought Crotty was going to kill her.
Her attacker initially told gardaí that his victim had instigated the attack, but admitted his guilt after CCTV footage showed him setting upon Ms O’Brien without provocation.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin unequivocally condemned the “vicious” attack and confirmed that the Defence Forces had launched their own internal processes to deal with Crotty.
Taoiseach Simon Harris praised Ms O’Brien for speaking out against her attacker. He said it was really important that victims come forward.
“There is still far too much violence against women in our country. I, as Taoiseach, as a parent, as a father to a daughter, want to create a very different society for young women to grow up in,” Mr Harris said.
Both party leaders stressed that there are active Defence Forces procedures, and that it was open to the DPP to appeal sentences that it felt were lenient.
In her witness statement, Ms O’Brien said: “I felt completely helpless, feeling like I was being used as a punching bag, I didn’t feel human.”
Judge Tom O’Donnell said the “headline” sentence for the case was five years and was clear about his reasons for imposing a lower tariff.
However, everyone who wants to encourage victims to rely on the criminal justice system for redress may feel that something is out of kilter on this occasion.
Two very different North American icons died this week, united by the common experience of rising above very difficult beginnings to their lives.
For a sport with a limited global footprint, baseball nevertheless has been able to imprint some of its biggest names on our collective imagination. Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig ... and Willie Mays.
The difference between Willie Mays and the others was that he was a black man from Alabama before he broke through the all-negro lower leagues to star for the New York/ San Francisco Giants and New York Mets.
In his early days during the 1950s, black and white team-mates remained apart. Mays, who died this week aged 93, said: “We couldn’t stay in the same hotels. We’d get to Chicago, we’d get off on the southside.”
When asked how he coped with racist insults on the field, he replied: “Every time they called me some name, I hit it further.”
The other mould-breaker to rise above their early years was the Canadian actor Donald Sutherland, who was stricken by rheumatic fever, hepatitis, and poliomyelitis as a young boy.
Sutherland was destined to be an engineer. Then he set off for London, enrolled in a drama school, and became a jobbing actor — never to look back.
Sutherland, political activist and veteran of nearly 200 films and TV shows, died in Florida aged 88.
Three of his best-known works — , and — focus on anti-heroes of military conflict rather than the flag-waving of the war films that went before.
The world is a small, and less interesting, place without him and his wry smile.
While many headlines have been generated this week by the inauguration of Limerick’s first directly-elected mayor, Cork city has its own reasons to celebrate the more traditional methods of appointing first citizens.
The departure of councillor Kieran McCarthy from office will be a sad moment for all those who have enjoyed his impromptu humour, his deep knowledge of the city’s history and culture, and his penchant for breaking into song at any opportunity.
Equally important is the evident pleasure with which he and his lady mayoress, Marcelline Bonneau, have been received by children at the many schools they visited.
They will have a lovely picture book of memories as a memento of their terms of office which covered about 1,600 events.
In an eloquent valediction, Mr McCarthy spoke tellingly of the importance of local democracy and all those “pilgrims” — including voters — who participate in it.
To those councillors returning to City Hall for the new political term, he reminded them of the characters they may have met along the pilgrims’ way.
“You met people who befriended you straight away. You met people who closed the door in your face. You met people who had their own message.
“You met people who are happy, who are sad, who are very angry, who shout in your face, who don’t want to talk, who are struggling in life, who seek a listener, who seek a chance, who are soaring in life, who buried a loved one an hour before you called, a mother who just put their child to sleep, people who will ask you in for tea.
“You encountered opinionated people and people who have no opinion, people who are the salt of the earth, people who are guardian angels, people who you perhaps wept for in your private moments, people who you laughed with, people who invited you into their house to chat about this and that.
“You have met survivors. You have met people who have given up on life. You met people who are lighthouses.”
If Rodgers and Hammerstein were still around to put that to music, they would have a natural follow-up hit with the storyline of Dan Boyle, the first member of the Green Party to be appointed mayor of Cork and his deputy, Honore Kamegni, the first black man to be voted onto the city council.
Mr Boyle is a veteran campaigner on environmental issues. He was first elected to Cork City Council in 1991, and was re-elected in 1999, 2019, and 2024. He served as a TD from 2002 to 2007 and was a senator from 2007 to 2011.
Mr Kamegni hails from Cameroon, has lived in Cork for 22 years, and worked as a postman. He said he was inspired to stand for election when he saw a photo of city councillors “without a single black face in it.”
Good luck to them.
Perhaps they could open the next meeting with a song from in the style favoured by their predecessor: “Climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow, ‘till you find your dream.”