Convicted sex offender jailed for assaulting garda

A convicted sex offender, who assaulted a garda who was helping social workers remove his baby from his care, has been jailed for two years and four months.

The victim in the case, Garda Barry Purcell, said that in his 12 years in the gardaí, he never experienced such an assault or aggression as he had in this incident.

The 33-year-old man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his child, was convicted by a jury of assault causing harm to Garda Purcell in Dublin on June 16, 2016, following a trial last October in Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

The court heard the man, who has 23 previous convictions, does not accept the verdict of the jury. He has a district court conviction for sexual assault for which he received a five-month sentence.

Sentencing the man on Friday, Judge Karen O’Connor said there were a number of aggravating factors in the case, including the psychological damage caused to Garda Purcell.

“It should be noted this arose when Garda Purcell was assisting social workers to get nappies and clothing for the baby,” the judge said.

She said the man does not accept his guilt and “appears to have a pattern of disregard for the rules”.

Judge O’Connor set a sentence of two years and four months and backdated it to account for five months the man previously spent in custody on the matter.

As he was led away by prison guards, the man told the judge repeatedly: “The garda assaulted me.”

The court heard Garda Purcell suffered swelling and bruising to his hand and forearm, causing difficulty using his hand as normal. He said the injuries cleared up but the incident impacted how he dealt with future incidents.

In his victim impact statement previously handed in to court, he said that for a long time he had been hesitant and fearful in certain situations. He said he was very conscious of his surroundings and who he was dealing with.

Garda Purcell said he was also affected by the man trying to “blacken” his reputation during the trial by saying he was a racist.

The court heard that the accused man, who is originally from the Congo, claimed during the trial that the trigger for the violence had been Garda Purcell engaging in racial abuse towards him and calling him a “monkey”.

The garda said he took that very seriously as he took pride in the way he dealt professionally with the public.