DPP lodges appeal against soldier Cathal Crotty’s suspended sentence 

He had initially tried to blame the victim, Natasha O’Brien, 24, by wrongly telling the gardaí who arrested him that Ms O’Brien had instigated the attack at O’Connell Street, Limerick, on May 29, 2022.

The appeal was for undue leniency of sentence. There is no date yet for an initial hearing in the appeal.

Before sentencing Crotty to a suspended term last month, Judge Tom O’Donnell told Ms O’Brien it was significant Crotty had pleaded guilty. This, the judge said, meant there would be no trial, and Ms O’Brien would not have to endure the additional trauma of waiting longer for the case to come to court.

Judge O’Donnell asked Ms O’Brien on two occasions if she realised the “significance” of Crotty’s early guilty plea. He also told her he had “no doubt” that Crotty would lose his job in the Defence Forces if he imposed an immediate prison term. Crotty had no prior convictions.

The judge said he had to balance this against aggravating factors which included: that Crotty was probably intoxicated; the level of violence he used; that Crotty boasted on social media afterwards to friends “two to put her down, two to put her out”; that Crotty tried to blame Ms O’Brien for the assault but only admitted his guilt when gardaí presented him with CCTV footage of him assaulting her without provocation.

Judge O’Donnell said a headline sentence was “five years” and he imposed a three-year sentence which he suspended in its entirety. He also ordered Crotty to pay €3,000 compensation to Ms O’Brien without prejudice to any potential civil court proceedings.

Natasha O’Brien welcomed the move by the DPP but added: “This is the lodging of an appeal, it’s not accepted yet and I may not be successful. I want people to know that and be aware that not every appeal is even accepted let alone won.

Ms O’Brien said she has been advised that it can be “quite difficult for the DPP to pursue an appeal, sometimes they don’t have the grounds, which is very sad”.

“I am almost certain that there are a far greater number of unduly lenient sentences that don’t get to that point.” She said she is concerned at some of the reaction to her publicly expressing her disappointment at both the sentence handed to Crotty and at her wider campaigning to seek changes in how judges deal with victims of crime.

“I’ve been receiving an outrageous amount of backlash this past weekend, in regards to people saying ‘would she give it a rest’ , ‘she deserved it, she’s mouthy’.

“That is really frightening, this is a societal issue and people are getting frustrated that I am continuing to speak out about this? I won’t be giving it a rest, because we, as a society, are only at the start – we are moving forward but it is nowhere where we need to be.

“To any of those commentators – their hate is my motivation to keep going,” she said.