A former garda’s wife said that during their 12-year marriage, he put her and her kids “through horror after horror as a family” and that he had a lasting impact on their lives, reports RTE.
Between 2008 and 2019, Mark Doyle, 38, entered a guilty plea to six counts of assault causing damage to his ex-wife and his two stepchildren.
From the outside, Maeve Doyle’s ex-husband appeared to be “a respected member of the community but a monster in our home”.
Doyle’s wife and family endured a 12-year period of abuse, coercive control, and domestic violence, all of which were detailed in a court document filed today in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, reports RTE.
Doyle worked as a garda at Cabra, Ronanstown, and Blanchardstown before being suspended and then resigning when a criminal probe was launched.
On multiple instances, he acknowledged hitting his spouse Maeve in the side of the head, puncturing her eardrum, slapping her, kicking her in the side with boots while she was on the ground, hurling a chair at her, grabbing her by the hair, dragging her down the hallway, and strangling her.
“See what you made me do, you just won’t stop” was one of the many occasions he blamed her for his violent behaviour, reports RTE.
He also struck her grown-up children, once laughing as he shot one of the kids with a pellet pistol and then took the pellet out with tweezers.
In her victim impact statement, Ms. Doyle described how, although a respected part of the community as a garda, he was a monster at home. She also related how, once, the school became worried about something a kid had divulged, and he showed up for a school meeting in a police car while wearing his full garda uniform.
According to Ms Doyle, “the fall out since I left him, the tsunami of issues, the problems at all levels” were unimaginable, reports RTE.
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