Man told to leave his ex alone... even if she’s seeing Attila the Hun
Court hears jilted partner monitored woman’s texts
A JUDGE has told a man that it doesn’t matter if his ex is seeing Attila the Hun, he cannot interfere with her privacy by accessing her text messages without her knowledge.
At the Family Law Court, Judge Mary Larkin granted the woman a three-year safety order against her ex-partner.
The court heard that the man had been secretly going through her phone messages via another device, following her around and had made a complaint to TUSLA about her ability to care for their four-year-old daughter.
Judge Larkin told the man: ‘I am granting a safety order for three years. You cannot interfere with her privacy. You can’t do that.’
The woman told the court that her ex continued to harass her despite them breaking up last year.
In her evidence, the woman stated that her ex ‘monitored my movements and accessed my phone and was able to see where I was going and who I was with and this put me in fear of him and what he might would do’.
She stated: ‘He would know where I was going and who I was texting. He was getting into my phone – I couldn’t figure it out.’
Judge Larkin told the man that it doesn’t matter if she is seeing ‘Attila the Hun’ and it doesn’t matter if she knew that the man she was seeing was married or not.
Attila the Hun from the 5th century is one of history’s most notorious characters – a feared barbarian and leader of the Hunnic Empire from 434 to 453 AD, Attila was known to Romans for his brutality.
The man had commenced a cross-examination of his ex in the witness box at the Family Law Court, Judge Larkin told him: ‘You can’t stand here and ask her questions about her personal life.
‘You can ask about the allegations she made against you about you following her, about your TUSLA complaint about her and about you pushing and shoving her.’
The man said that accessing his ex’s mobile phone messages without her knowledge ‘was out of character for me’.
He said: ‘I wasn’t tracking her location through her phone.
‘I wasn’t in a very good head space because I had lost my family.
‘When I read these messages of the affair that she was having with this married man, it brought up a lot of stuff.’
The man said that messages from his ex-partner’s phone appeared on an old phone of hers after their four-year-old daughter turned on the phone.
Judge Larkin said: ‘So you are blaming your daughter?’ The man replied: ‘No, I am not.’ The woman said that she discovered that her ex-partner was accessing her text traffic on July 27 this year – almost one year after they split up.
The woman said that in a licensed premises, her ex-partner was shouting and roaring that she was neglecting their child and that would complain her to TUSLA.
She said: ‘He was calling me a whore, a tramp and a home-wrecker.’
The woman said that there were people around during this outburst and ‘it made me intimidated and I wanted this behaviour to stop’.
The woman said that TUSLA made contact with her six weeks after her ex-partner made his complaint and ‘the case was closed after 15 minutes’.
The woman said that on a sun holiday abroad, her ex-partner was throwing her against the fridge and furniture in their apartment after he said that she embarrassed him in front of their friends.
She said in their apartment ‘he wouldn’t let me leave and kept throwing me around the place’.
‘Cannot interfere with her privacy’ ‘Behaviour was out of character’