Wife of Fiona suspect ‘can’t come home to Ireland’
THE wife of a suspect in the disappearance of Fiona Pender was refused permission to return to Ireland after her husband was charged with sexually assaulting her in the country where they now live.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is under house arrest after breaching his bail conditions last week while he awaits trial for allegedly sexually assaulting and threatening to kill his wife.
The mother of his two children reported him to police earlier this year.
The woman, who is in her 30s, is trying to get sole custody of their children and applied to the authorities to go home to Ireland.
However, her application during the summer was denied and her husband still has visitation rights to their children, but he is not allowed to contact his wife.
A friend said: ‘She is just desperate to get home, she wants to be back here with her family.’ The woman, who has a teenage daughter from a different relationship, moved abroad four years ago with her husband and their children. However, last Christmas she left the family home and returned home to Ireland with her children.
But earlier this year she decided to return to her husband to give the relationship another chance. On May 24 she told police that her husband sexually assaulted her and he was charged on August 18. Two more sexual assault charges were subsequently made against him on October 27. He is also alleged to have threatened to kill his wife on two occasions between August 1 and November 30, 2013, and in June 2014.
Fiona Pender, who was seven months pregnant, disappeared on August 22, 1996 after spending the day shopping for baby clothes with her mother Josephine.
Josephine spoke to the MoS recently of the torment her family has suffered. Fourteen months before Fiona’s disappearance, her brother Mark was killed in a motorcycle accident and in 2000 her father took his own life as he could no longer cope with the loss of his children.