You can’t control us any more
Mum recalls years of violent attacks by vicious husband Previous partner reveals how she too suffered living hell
TWO survivors of savage domestic abuse have joined forces to tell their jailed attacker: “You don’t have control over us any more.”
Monster Laurence Elmore hit his pregnant wife Martina Connolly over the head with a chair and previously tried to smother another woman.
The violent control freak was caged for three years in July 2020 over a shocking attack on Martina and her mum Patricia – but he is due for release later this year.
Brave Martina, 45, and Catherine Moore, 42, have been told the thug will walk free from Dublin’s Wheatfield Prison in October.
The attack on Martina on July 29, 2018, was the end of a string of violent incidents at the hands of her manipulative and violent husband.
And after a vicious attack on Catherine almost a decade earlier, she revealed: “Still to this day he won’t leave me alone.”
Elmore, who lived with Martina at her parents’ house in Clogherhead, Co Louth, had gone for a few drinks with Martina’s father Kevin on the day of the attack.
After Martina and her mother picked them up, Kevin decided to go for a walk and that’s when the violent assault on the pair took place.
Martina, who was eight months pregnant with twins at the time, ended up with a bloody nose, broken bones in her hand and a chair being smashed over her head.
Elmore pushed her elderly mother Patricia, 75, who split her head open after she fell against the cooker.
Martina has since learned she was just the latest victim of Elmore’s violent temper and he had a history of violence.
He had previously been jailed for three years for an attack on a former partner in Wexford in 2014 in which he punched her, stamped on her and tried to smother her.
The 42-year-old brute also broke a protection order in October 2012 against another woman for which he received a three-month suspended sentence.
Now fellow abuse survivor Catherine, who was in a relationship with him from 2005 to 2011, is speaking out for the first time about the violence she endured.
She has told how she had an ashtray smashed over her head and Elmore bit her on the face during his reign of terror. The mother-of-five said despite making numerous statements following violent attacks by Elmore, she was too scared to ever follow through and press charges against him. And Catherine said despite splitting up with him ten years ago, he continues to threaten her indirectly from behind bars. Courageous Catherine told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I applaud her [Martina] for doing what I couldn’t. “When I was four months pregnant with our son I was placed in a women’s refuge and still to this day he won’t leave me alone.” Catherine said she has been advised by gardai to get a protection order against Elmore.
Recalling how the abuse started Catherine said: “He started off mentally abusing me, he took me from my family and beat me and put me in hospital at one stage.
“I had to have 10 staples in my head. I had a broken nose, broken eye socket, broken arm and two broken ribs.
“My sister came to the hospital to see me and didn’t even recognise me. People thought I had been in a car crash. I was that bad.
“He used me as a punch
bag and I even woke up with him pounding on my face. My three eldest children have seen things they should have never seen.
“He left me on the floor numerous times in pools of blood. I was too afraid of him to press charges at the time.”
Catherine described sinister threats she has received including Facebook messages with pictures of guns and the chilling words “see you soon”.
She said: “I need him to see that I am not going to run any more. It’s not fair that I have to fear every time I look over my shoulder.
“He bit my face, he bounced an ashtray off my head, he smashed my house up. My family had to come and get my children and I.
“He doesn’t care about the law. He has stood on my face, I don’t even have my own teeth any more because of him.”
Martina said more needs to
be done to warn people of domestic abusers – including an online register.
She said: “I would be calling on the Government to set up a list with the names of repeat offenders on it.
“He’s not entitled to any data protection. Everything like that, all power, should be taken away from them.
“When I was in court, half of the stuff he had done before which was on record, I didn’t even know about.
“If we can take a bit of power away from them then they have got none.”
Elmore, from Balbriggan in north Co Dublin, pleaded guilty to the assaults on Martina and Patricia and was handed two concurrent three-and-a-half year sentences, with the final six months suspended. Martina revealed Elmore’s violent streak emerged early into their marriage and quickly escalated.
She said: “The first time he laid a hand on me was just four months after we got married. It was in front of my parents. I saw his hand coming so I ducked my head.
“The next time he hit me I was four months pregnant with our twins. I had told my mam at this stage that the marriage was over.
“He pulled my hair and broke my phone.
“Another time he got hold of a Valentine’s Day teddy bear I had, ripped it apart and shoved it up my nose which caused my nose to bleed.
“Then when I was at the kitchen sink trying to get my nose bleed under control he pulled open the kitchen drawer and put my hand into it and shut it closed.
“It broke my hand, my middle and index finger and my knuckle.
“He then pushed my mam back into the cooker and split her head open. When I was sitting down in front of her trying to keep her conscious he got hold of a chair and whacked that across the back of my head.
“He just left, walked out. That day, that was it, I was done with him.”
Elmore has also tried to get in touch with Martina from behind bars.
She said: “The last time I had any contact with him was when he wrote my mam a letter asking her if she could ask me to forgive him.
“The only letter he was going to be getting off me was divorce papers.”