EX-COP CAGED

Former garda who put ex-wife and stepsons through ‘horror after horror’ jailed for six years

Meav Doyle’s victim impact statement was read in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last week

• Published: 14:20, 15 Mar 2024
• Updated: 14:20, 15 Mar 2024

A FORMER garda who put his ex-wife and stepsons through “horror after horror” over a 12-year period has been jailed for six years.

Mark Doyle, 38, with a previous address at Corbally Paddocks, Newbridge, Co Kildare, admitted five counts of assault causing harm to Meav Doyle and two counts of assaulting two of her sons causing them harm on dates between September 2007 and August 2019.

The brute, who had been stationed at Ronanstown, Blanchardstown and Cabra, was suspended by An Garda Síochána and later resigned from the force before pleading guilty on the day of his scheduled trial last October.

He was a member of the Irish Defence Forces between 2002 and 2009 and a garda between 2009 and 2023.

Reading her victim impact statement in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court this week, Meav McLoughlin-Doyle said her ex-husband took herself and her children through “horror after horror” during the 12 years they were together.

She described a relationship marked by control, violence, coercion and abuse during which she and her children lived in “constant terror and fear”.

“He was a respected member of the community but a monster in our home. He used his position to shake off any suspicion,” she said.

Sentencing Doyle today, Judge Martin Nolan said Doyle engaged in “reprehensible” behaviour which involved a “pattern of violence” against his partner and her two sons.

“For reasons known only to Mr Doyle, he couldn’t control his temper and blamed his wife for his own bad behaviour,” the judge said.

The judge said it was “noteworthy” that Doyle was a former member of the defence forces and a member of An Garda Siochana. He noted the offending took place in front of children at times.

“It was an oppressive house to live in,” the judge said. “Meav Doyle bears the scars of all of this.”

He handed down a global sentence of six years, backdated from Thursday when Doyle went into custody.

The court heard that Doyle once showed up to a parent teacher meeting in his garda car and full uniform, after the school had expressed concerns over a disclosure by a child.

“Home is supposed to be a place of support and safety, but it was the opposite.

“Our home was a place of fear, humiliation, violence and walking on eggshells, ” Ms McLoughlin-Doyle said in her impact statement.

Ms McLoughlin-Doyle said that she could never have imagined the “tsunami of issues” and constant fight to survive that she and her children had endured as fallout of the abuse.

“The trauma will last a lifetime,” she said, adding that the abuse had turned her from a confident, outgoing, ambitious woman into a shell of herself, suffering from anxiety, panic attacks and depression.

Her children suffer from numerous mental health difficulties including anxiety, self-harm ideation, and anger issues, the court heard.