Soldier beats a woman unconscious, gets a great reference from his CO. Jailed after appeal

Now its the woman's fault for nearly getting murdered on the street. This psychopath must have friends in high places. Make no mistake about it, This f**king gadge is a total psychopath, and he will do it again. And when he does it again, and mark these words, he will, he might even do it to a politicians child. He might even have the tenacity to do it to a politicians house, god f**king forbid. But until that hypothetical happens, nothing of any sort of civilised justice will ever happen to this brainwarped sheltered animal scumbag. You can take that to the bank.

I think dementia or mild cognitive impairment that is not so mild could have a fair bit to do with it.

A lot of people stay really sharp and perfect into old age. But then a lot of them slowly lose their minds and don't really live in the same world anymore.

The way the legal system or any public system is made up is that it assumes people only progress in authority with age, they never get worse. Just look at the farce presidential election in the US for the most important person in the world.

Agree what your saying about the martial arts lads avoiding conflict is BS, have a friend who in his youth was a serious at martial arts and when anyone looked for trouble wasn’t shy about sorting them out with his expertise and he always reckoned a lad that got away with giving a few slaps became bold more often looking for trouble and was going to do damage to some person, he usually could handle trouble without seriously hurting them.

Weak sentence, from a weak Judge, in a weak system, in a weak country…everything about our justice system is limp from the top down.

But unless attitudes change this stuff will go on and on, I do wonder if people realize just how often **** like this happens and how bad it is, this is by no means a shock its just this case became high profile and has drawn attention, but I no of people who have high double digit offences that haven't seen the inside of a jail yet, some violent offences too, but without fail the standard poor me story does the job…be it no father around, mother didn't love me enough, bad background, addiction problems the list goes on and on and it works 99% of the time.

On top of that capacity of prisons is a problem, more prisons need to be built, but for whatever reason its just never seen as a priority.

My thoughts

First of all sympathy for Natasha recovering from the fallout of that attack. It will take time. Seeing the perp get a custodial sentence would have helped her with that

Thew issue here is a judges issue. The suspension of sentences is a symptom of our poor justice system

The lack of prison space means judges will look for any reason not to put someone to jail. Even when they do handout a custodial sentence, other inmates can often then be moved to temporary release in order to make room. In case you're in any doubt, we have zero prison space all the time. It's the normal situation. We do not have any capacity

The dpp unlikely to appeal I think because to appeal, the dpp needs to show that suspending the sentence is excessive and out of line with normal practice. But it's not out of line. It's perfectly in line with what happens all the time so I think the dpp hasn't really got much room to appeal

Cuan isn’t an NGO. It’s a Statutory Agency under the auspices of the Department's of Justice. It’s actually a “GO”.

It’s not legally permissible for Government Organisations to comment on decisions of the independent judiciary, given the Constitutional separation of powers under Article 35.

When you need high-grade misdirection, bring on Fintan O’Toole.

He says the judicial system is failing women and gives a list of terrible cases where men were give fully suspended sentences for attacking their partners or for sexual assaul, even rape. None of these cases have the particular set of factors which made Natasha’s case into a national fire-storm (complete stranger, beaten unconscious, boasting after, commanding officer in support).

Fintan knows as well as everyone on this thread that Natasha O’Brien’s case was not about gender - Crotty would have done the same if she were a man and Crotty would have received no heavier sentence.

Fintan knows perfectly well that thugs who viciously assault other men walk free from our courts regularly. The problem is Fintan agrees with those sentences but won’t admit it. In fact, Fintan is against prison in principle except for his favourite white-collar targets but he has no answer for women who are sick of the judicial charade of non-punishments.

Not a word about Cmdt. Togher or the Tribunal of Inquiry. When Fintan still had fire in his belly, Tribunals were his stomping ground. What’s happened to old Fintan?

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/06/25/cathal-crottys-suspended-sentence-is-part-of-an-instruction-manual-for-male-attackers/

Crotty is a typical bully. Saw a soft target and proceeded to beat her up. What a shining light to have in our defence forces. I'm simply staggered his higher up gave him a character reference. Credit it to her for going through with a prosecution. Shame on the legal system for failing her. Handy timing for the judge to be retiring.

As for Crotty his name is muck which is probably as much as he is going to suffer. But then if you don't have your name what have you. Best wishes to the girl for the future. She more than deserves and good breaks she gets in life going forward.

well put volchitsa.

if we only spoke up when it felt safe we’d be silent. And I don’t just mean physically safe. The boys in school were larger and louder than me. My early male bosses didn’t listen to women. We speak up because we need to.

Just wondering about the people he was with who did not intervene. Apparently they did not try to stop him. Did they render any assistance or did they just run off with Crotty? IMO they need to be named and shamed.

Natasha was on The Indo Daily podcast and said that she and her friend spent weeks scouring SM until they found Crotty and gave the info to the Guards.

Beggars belief.

Nobody is belittling when men get beaten up, or I'm not anyway. My brother, who was never in a fight in school in his life, got beaten up two entirely different times in entirely unprovoked attacks - and I've already described how I've occasionally put myself out there to rescue young lads who were obviously heading for a similarly unprovoked beating when I was a teen.

So I don't think that's a very fair response to make to my post TBH. The day that gangs of women start going around beating up random men, then you'll have a good point. Until then it comes across as the usual male dismissal of a specific issue of male violence against women.

Because to be frank, male on male attacks are a problem of male violence, and women can't do much about that. I'd suggest that men should, though. But saying "Oh but it happens to men too" is missing the point - at best. It's almost normalising it - like earthquakes or traffic accidents, just stuff that happens.