TV fitness instructor found guilty of punching his model ex in the face
Row ‘was over his cheating’
TV fitness instructor Francis Usanga has been found guilty of assaulting his expartner – who told a court she was punched in the face when she confronted him about cheating.
In the aftermath of the attack, mother-of-two Emma Murphy made a video about her ordeal which went viral on the internet, and she also appeared in ITV’s Loose Women.
She told the trial yesterday that if she hadn’t spoken out she would have remained in an abusive relationship with Usanga, 31, of Lanesboro, Finglas, Dublin.
Her ex-partner, a former fitness expert on RTÉ’s Today show, was accused of assault causing harm to model and blogger Ms Murphy, which he had denied. The attack took place while they had a row outside his former workplace at FX Fitness gym in Santry, north Dublin, on July 3, 2015, Dublin District Court was told.
In evidence, Ms Murphy told Judge Bryan Smyth that Usanga was the father of her two young children. She said they had been in a relationship for three-and-ahalf years, and described this relationship as ‘really bad, toxic’.
On the day in question, she went with her children in the car to the gym where he worked to talk to him about their relationship and his cheating, she said.
She said he had told her to ‘f*** off’ after she asked for his phone.
She told the court there had been ‘a crazy amount of cheating going on’ and that she wanted to call one of his friends to ask him if Usanga had been with him over the previous weekend. She said she needed to get to the bottom of it ‘because it was not fair on me, it was not fair on my children’.
She said he gave her a phone and that she went outside with it, and discovered more cheating.
‘I said, “You cheated on me again”,’ she told the court. She said she was disgusted and threw the phone in his direction, and he then punched her in the face.
‘He straight up punched me with his hand, his fist,’ she said.
She said she was hit on her left eye and was ‘distraught’. She said her children, then aged six months and 18 months, were in the car.
‘It was bad enough that he was cheating and then it came to another black eye,’ she said.
She said she drove away, and that her brother Carl later took photos of her injuries.
In cross-examination with defence solicitor Michael Hanahoe, it was put to her that Usanga had been a celebrity, and that she broke into his Facebook account to tell his 10,000 followers she had been assaulted by him and ‘that was the type of person he was’. She agreed she shared a video.
The defence suggested this was an attempt to ‘destroy him’ but she replied: ‘It was my attempt to get out of an abusive relationship; if I had not, I would probably still be there.’
In evidence, Usanga – who is currently unemployed, the court heard yesterday – claimed he was in fear for his life of Ms Murphy.
He said: ‘I felt my life was in danger’ – and maintained that he used his hands to push her away.
However, Judge Smyth did not accept his claim that he pushed her away because he was in fear of her, or the argument that this was justifiable force.
Sentencing was adjourned to allow Ms Murphy to prepare a victim-impact statement in writing.
Ms Murphy was hugged by relatives and supporters as the judge gave his verdict, and the case was adjourned to a date next month.