Anti-lockdown protester jailed for attacking woman with wooden plank
Man who was with ‘crazed mob’ gets two years in prison over brutal assault
‘I thought I was about to die’
A WOMAN who was assaulted by an anti-lockdown protester has told a court that footage of the attack and its aftermath caused many people to come ‘to their senses about how dangerous it is to ignore far-right protests’.
Judge Martin Nolan described the September 2020 attack by Louth man Michael Quinn, 30, on Ruth O’Rourke, AKA Izzy Kamikaze, as cowardly.
He said the behaviour of Quinn and his associates after the attack was reprehensible.
Dara Hayes BL, prosecuting, outlined to Dublin Circuit Criminal Court how on September 12 last year, Ms Kamikaze, 58, had attended a rally on O’Connell Street in support of frontline workers. She and four friends later walked over to Kildare Street, where a protest against Covid lockdown regulations was taking place outside Leinster House.
Ms Kamikaze was observing the protest when a number of masked men approached her in an aggressive fashion, some of them concealing weapons or wearing gloves with reinforced knuckles.
She said that Quinn was holding a large plank of wood which had a Tricolour nailed to it, and that he swung this at her head, knocking her to the ground.
Reading from her own victimimpact statement yesterday, Ms Kamikaze described how a large crowd of protesters then began shouting homophobic slurs at her and her friends and continued to do so even after gardaí intervened to keep the hostile crowd at bay.
‘They swarmed towards us with the aim of driving us off the street,’ Ms Kamikaze said.
She said they were shouting, ‘Paedo scum off our streets’ with the ‘air of a crazed mob’.
She said she lay on the ground for ten seconds listening to the protesters ‘baying’ for her blood.
‘Ten seconds is a long time to listen to a mob baying for your blood, especially when you’re lying on the ground,’ she said. ‘I thought I was about to die or receive lifethreatening injuries.’
Ms Kamikaze said she was able to get up before the first angry boot could hit her face.
She said that when she got back to her feet she stood for around five minutes ‘to exercise my right to stand in the street’.
She said blood was running down her head and face and soaking her clothes as protesters shouted a tirade of abuse at her and her four friends, who included a teenager and two women, in their 40s and 50s.
She said the protesters were shouting: ‘Perverts! Weirdos! Dyke! Get your foreign ways out of my country! Tramps! How’s the head, missus! Haha’, and the noise that groups of children make when they bully another child: ‘Ah-ha!’
Video footage of the assault and the mob’s behaviour afterwards was released online, and Ms Kamikaze said that this meant ‘a lot of people came to their senses about how dangerous it is to ignore farright protests’.
Ms Kamikaze said the footage caused people to consider ‘the evil in the heart of people who would beat people off the street for their gender or ethnicity’. She said Quinn ‘hurt himself and his movement far more than he hurt me’.
Quinn, of Malone Flats, Market Street, Ardee, Co. Louth, entered a guilty plea last June to assault causing harm to Ms Kamikaze on Kildare Street, Dublin 2, on September 12, 2020. His 48 previous convictions include assault, violent disorder, affray, burglary, theft and public order offences.
Justin McQuaid BL, defending, told the court that his client had instructed him to offer a public apology to Ms Kamikaze.
He asked the court to note a Probation Service report which stated that Quinn has displayed some ‘level of victim empathy’ and is remorseful. He said Quinn takes full responsibility for his actions and that this is his reason for his early plea of guilty.
He said his client suffers with his mental health, takes anti-depressants and that alcohol is a feature in his life. He said that domestic violence and alcohol featured in his upbringing, and that he is taking steps to address his issues.
Judge Nolan said everyone is entitled to demonstrate, but that the injured party was perfectly entitled to be on a public street.
He imposed a three-year prison term, and suspended the final year on certain conditions.
Offered a public apology