I implored the midwife: ‘Stay close to me – I don’t feel safe…’
Nicola tells how her abusive partner, a serving garda, made life a living hell
ATERMINALLY ill woman who suffered horrific abuse at the hands of a serving garda has waived her right to anonymity to tell her harrowing story in an RTÉ documentary. The documentary begins with disturbing audio footage of the garda roaring ‘you f***ing animal’ and ‘p***k’, which sets the scene for the years of abuse that were to follow.
Nicola* who is in her 40s, told how she met Paul Moody, 42, and from Celbridge, Co. Kildare on a dating app after she finished treatment for breast cancer.
She described how she wanted a family and recalled that she and Moody ‘clicked’ instantly.
It wasn’t long however before alarm bells started to ring for Nicola and her friends who witnessed his controlling and bullying ways early on in the relationship.
The cancer was in both breasts, my hip, my spine… we had to act fast
The documentary goes back to January 2016 when Nicola found a lump in her breast.
‘I actually thought at the time the worst news would be to hear the word cancer, but unfortunately the diagnosis was it was in both breasts, it was in my hip and my spine and it was in my liver and it was coming up the side of my neck, so we had to act fast.’
Nicola asked doctors to preserve her eggs because she wanted to have a baby, but there wasn’t time. She then started to fight the disease with everything she had. Six months later a scan revealed the ‘cancer was gone’.
‘That day was one of the best days of my life,’ Nicola says in the documentary. ‘I remember thinking “I will get married now”, because I’ve always wanted to get married. I always wanted my own little family, because I’m all about family. When you think you have another chance at life you grab it with both hands.’
Her wish for a partner led her to go onto a dating app and she got a message from the man who would very quickly become violent and controlling, Paul Moody. The documentary tells how they hit it off instantly and spent hours talking.
Looking back though, the warning signs were there from the beginning. Moody immediately tried to isolate Nicola from her friends and she describes how he made it clear he had done background checks on her family on Pulse, the Garda computer system.
Within weeks of meeting they went on a group holiday with friends and a friend tells how she left that holiday ‘very wary of him’.
He began to phone Nicola constantly. ‘My phone never stopped ringing…’ she says. ‘But I didn’t realise at that stage it was wrong.’
Moody’s controlling and abusive
My phone never stopped ringing. But I didn’t realise it was wrong
behaviour escalated quickly. He smashed up her apartment in a rage one day and he secretly took pictures of her as she was dressing.
Nicola tells the documentary how she tried to end the relationship at this point, but as she drove away, he followed her in his car shouting abuse at her and jamming on the brakes in front of her.
Nicola was terrified. A few days later discovered she was pregnant.
‘I didn’t want to be with Paul, I told him to go and get the help he needs if he ever wanted to be part of the baby’s life.’
Five months into the pregnancy Nicola found a lump. She was ‘petrified’ and ‘worried about my baby inside of me’.
‘I really didn’t believe the cancer would come back. From then on I needed Paul. He was being so supportive, he was being fantastic.’
However, when Nicola was eight months pregnant and ‘sick a lot’ the couple went to the beach. The medication she was on affected her legs and her ‘ability to walk’. Moody walked off on his pregnant girlfriend after an argument and watched as, unable to support herself, she was forced to crawl along the beach back to her car.
Moody’s abusive behaviour continued when Nicola was in labour in hospital. ‘I said to the midwife, “Stay close to me, I don’t feel safe”. I was absolutely devastated, because this moment I dreamt of
was nothing like that.’
Security eventually escorted Moody out of the hospital, but when she returned home with her baby boy she discovered he had stripped her apartment of her belongings.
‘One thing for sure, I love and adore my son, so if this is what it took to get him away, every single thing was worth it.’
Nicola’s cancer was spreading and she began researching different treatments. She set up a Go Fund Me page and raised money to travel to Bangkok for treatment. Christy Dignam got involved and put on an ‘amazing night’ to raise the muchneeded funds.
Still, Moody’s abuse continued while she was receiving treatment in Thailand. He wouldn’t allow their
We know what Paul Moody is doing to you. Would you like our help?
toddler son to travel to see his mum without him, so Nicola agreed he could visit.
She ended up leaving Bangkok with her baby after Moody became violent and aggressive one night.
Moody, however, was about to become the architect of his own downfall. The former garda accused one of Nicola’s family of bribing him and as a result handed in his phone to gardaí.
‘I remember getting a call from gardaí and they told me there was an accusation made by Paul Moody and there is going to be an investigation.
‘I got a phone call from the garda again. She asked me to meet her and she said, “We know what Paul Moody is doing to you, would you like our help?”.’
Moody pleaded guilty to coercive control and, in July 2022, he was sentenced to three years and three months in jail. Guardianship of their son was later removed from Moody and the documentary shows Nicola and her son playing happily on a beach together.
The strong and courageous woman tells the documentary, ‘There is always hope, but I will ask anybody who is suffering in silence to take one step because that one step you will never know where it will lead you to’.
Taking Back Control will air on Monday, December 11, at 9.35pm on RTÉ One and the RTÉ Player.