Soldier beats a woman unconscious, gets a great reference from his commanding officer, avoids jail.

I’m talking about children (adult children). I never meant kids. I thought that was obvious. Parents of children. As in older, late teens-adulthood.

Do you mean she just pretended to get a beating so she could become an actor of the state..like Zelensky?

Your man Crotty has a lot to answer for. Another media darling, Leftie activist for us all to listen drone on and on.

The way things are going now with the impending hate speech laws here is how things could play out keep his mouth shut he might get in trouble and don't shout so called homophobic abuse instead he would face less trouble from the law by just going over and stamping on the persons head and nearly killing them or worse he could then claim in court the victim said something offensive and he would likely get off free.

Too much muddying of the waters. Simple: we all as a society should be pushing for harsh and tough penalties for violent people. Proper harsh and tough sentencing to send out a proper message that hurting people will be punished harshly. Right now a lot of nasty bastids are willing to take their chances. We need to remove the likelihood of them taking their chances (again).

More likely than your stated scenario is people such as himself would be less likely to shout homophobic abuse. This would mean nobody would have to call out his behavior. If the scenario still happened, he would be charged for both hate speech and the violent assault.

Well that tweet from the a far right nutter is attempting to downplay the assault entirely. Honestly, this is more shining a light on some of the nasty **** that posters on the site are happy to espouse....

I cannot agree with you're post he was already charged and convicted of assault the Judge just let him go without punishment of any kind.

If you don't agree with something somebody says you are free to say so.

Charging people with speech while letting off convicted scumbags like this is obscene.

If this is the way the country is already run we don't need to be given the state more powers.

Good

There should be a reporter on a permanent basis in every courtroom daily and a website where the public can look up each conviction electronically daily. Even if it gave the convicted persons name as "Mr/Mrs X" (although I'd be on for names as court sittings are publicly available information anyway, but in case there were any objections to a website on the basis of "snooping")

You're absolutely correct the case has drawn attention because of her going public (and fair play to her)

But stuff like this is happening up and down the country DAILY. And not just assaults. All types of crime. And we occasionally get a glimpse with a headline and so on because a journalist happens to have been in that particular court that day.

There's absolutely no wonder why there's headlines about Dublin being a sh hole and people across the country with 100s of convictions once again committing crime.

When on earth is the connection between the two problems going to be made politically?

Full transparency is needed as to what's actually going on. And I'm not talking about going full North Korea on people. But if you have 100 convictions and are out again to commit your 101st, the fact is, if you were in prison, you wouldn't have been free to commit the 101st.

And absolutely throw money at education, work programmes and mental health for those in prison. 1)they're not roaming about committing more crime and 2) there's a chance they'll actually access proper resources. I've absolutely no issue paying extra tax for that.

This soldier had no previous but I'm talking about the consequences for offenders generally. Which this hot topic is putting focus on (before fizzling away again)

If he can behave like he did and get a suspended sentence, sure no wonder there's gangs of young lads on electric scooters/rural burglary gangs/shoplifters/pickpockets/drug dealers in open streets going around causing mayhem for us all.

Time was when the Irish Times [years back] did have a reporter in the courts with a page set aside for reports from the courts daily. Long since gone.

From a report in the Journal.ie today on the DPP decision to appeal the sentence passed by Judge Tom O'Donnell on Pte Crotty….. Before sentencing Crotty to a suspended term, Judge Tom O’Donnell, on two occasions, told and asked O’Brien it she knew of the significance of her attacker’s guilty plea. 

The judge told O’Brien that he had “no doubt” that Crotty would lose his job in the Defence Forces if he sentenced him an immediate prison term and that he had taken the aforementioned guilty plea and the fact he had no previous convictions into account.

If the content in the report of the judge's question to the victim is correct and people present at the time in the court heard the judge put the question to the prime witness and victim twice, the question arises on what the judge had in mind in asking that of the victim. Crotty had pleaded guilty on becoming aware of the evidence the Gardai had gathered against him so the only task left to the Judge was to decide on the sentence. The victim has no part in the decision.

Now it's in the lap of the Appeal court to decide on whether the severity of the sentence passed by Judge O'Donnell on Crotty was suitable to the crime he pleaded guilty to.