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A judge has told a father “You cannot take the law into your own hands” after he carried out a courtroom attack on his daughter’s sex abuser.
The man, who was “overcome with emotion”, was spared jail but had a conviction recorded, and he was fined €300 after admitting he assaulted Daniel Martin (47), formerly of Old County Road, Crumlin, Dublin.
Martin, who was bleeding in the aftermath, needed medical attention after being attacked as he faced sentencing at the Central Criminal Court on January 29th last.
A jury had convicted him of abusing a teenage girl and showing pornography to another child.
The father of one of the complainants, who cannot be identified to protect his daughter’s right to anonymity, appeared before Judge Treasa Kelly at Dublin District Court.
He pleaded guilty to attacking Martin.
In evidence, Garda Gary Kelly said the father entered the court, approached the man “in the dock,” and began to strike him before being “escorted out of the courtroom”.
Martin, now a jailed sex offender, provided a victim-impact statement. But it was not read out.
Pleading for leniency, the defence solicitor described the circumstances as unusual and said it had been a stressful time for his family.
The court heard he acknowledged “he should not have taken the law into his own hands” but had been “overcome with emotion and knows he should not have done it.”
The judge said it was “totally unacceptable behaviour” and warned: “You cannot take the law into your own hands.”
However, she held a custodial sentence was not necessary. Instead, she imposed a fine that must be paid within four months and bound the father over to keep the peace for a year.
Mr Justice Paul Burns had described the scene of the courtroom attack as a “serious breach of security”, and Martin’s sentencing was delayed for a month before he was jailed for 12 years.
He was convicted following a trial last December of 11 counts of sexual abuse, including sexual assault, aggravated sexual assault, rape and sexual exploitation against one girl on dates between 2019 and 2020. The girl was aged between 15 and 16 years old at the time.
He was also found guilty of causing another teenage girl to watch pornography.
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