Man threatened to burn ex's face so ‘nobody would look at her again'

A TEN-year-jail term has been imposed on an Inchigeelagh man who falsely imprisoned his ex-girlfriend for 24 hours and slashed a big canvas poster of Marilyn Monroe with a machete, threatening that the same would happen to her.

Michael Lynch, 26, with an address at Tír na Spiteóga, Inchigeelagh, denied the crime but a jury found him guilty.

Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin jailed him for ten years with the last two years suspended.

Detective Garda Tom O’Sullivan said the victim feared for her life and only managed to climb out a window when the landlord called for rent from Lynch.

Det Garda O’Sullivan confirmed for the judge that this was the same man who poured a kettle of boiling water and sugar over another ex-girlfriend’s leg. 

Judge David Riordan imposed a two-and-a-half year sentence on Lynch for that crime, but the Court of Criminal Appeal increased it to four years.

Lynch had another conviction from 2013 for assault causing harm to a 14-year-old girl living with him in Kilkenny.

Judge Ó Donnabháin said the meticulousness of the violence shown by Lynch in the present case was frightening.

Garda Muireann Byrne read a victim impact report from Katie Nugent who did not want to be in court to see Lynch. 

She said in the report that he followed her from room to room and came at her with the machete and knives and the threat of boiling water.

Ms Nugent said of the trial of Lynch: ‘I felt I was being judged in the court experience. There is huge embarrassment around being the victim, but enough is enough.’

Brendan Kelly, defence barrister, said the accused had a difficult and very violent past and he asked for some light at the end of the tunnel. He said he was thriving in prison with the structure it afforded and the educational opportunities.

The judge said Lynch had not shown any insight or any remorse.

In February the eight men and four women of the jury  found Lynch guilty of falsely imprisoning Katie Nugent on November 19th 2015 at his rented home.

Katie Nugent testified that she had been in a relationship with Lynch for two or three weeks, but the relationship was over on November 19th. She met him that night and asked him to drive her home, but he drove her to his own home.

Ms Nugent said: ‘I kept asking him to bring me home. He started hitting me. He got a knife and started running towards me with a knife, it was like a bread knife, a big long knife. He was running towards me laughing. Anytime I put my hands up he would get the wall behind me.

‘He got the belt and he tried to choke me with the belt, a red belt. I went to the bedroom. I must have fallen asleep. Things started happening again in the morning. He started boiling water. He came in with a big dish and tried to throw the water at me. He had an aerosol can and he said he would light my face and hair and no one would look at me again.

‘I was lying down crying. I wanted to go home. He came in with a machete and hit it off my hip. He hit me with the back of it, not the sharp side of it.

‘He ripped the picture with the machete, a Marilyn Monroe picture. He said that is what he would do to me. It was hanging in the bedroom. He was running at me with the knife. I thought I was never going to get out of the house. I just wanted to go home and see my kids.’

She said that the landlord Con O’Sullivan, who lived nearby, called to collect the rent and that the accused, Michael Lynch, went to the front door and spoke to him. She got out a window, ran to the landlord’s house and called the gardaí.