A young woman who caught her best friend having a secret affair with her partner has been ordered to make a €500 donation to charity after she assaulted the pair.
Kathy McCarron appeared at Letterkenny District Court in Co Donegal charged with two counts of assault in what was referred to in court as a “crime of passion.”
The 27-year-old nursing student called to the home of Therese McGinley after receiving strange but exactly the same snapchat messages from both her partner and also her best friend in the early hours of July 25th, 2021.
She became suspicious and went to the home of Ms McGinley where she spotted her partner’s car around the corner at around 12.45am.
Ms McCarron confronted Ms McGinley, her best friend of seven years and Godmother of her youngest son, and a row ensued.
McGinley was pinned against a wall, assaulted and had to receive a number of paper stitches after being cut above her eye.
Ms McCarron then went searching for her partner Michael Tinney and in her statement said she found him in the bathroom of the house in his boxer shorts.
She hit him a number of slaps in the face and in the chest before leaving the house.
Mr Tinney claimed to Gardai that he was in the sitting room of Ms McGinley’s house at Cathedral Hill, Raphoe having a cup of tea.
Solicitor for the accused, Mr Rory O’Brien told the court that in his 15 years in the court he had never come across a case in which he had more sympathy for the accused.
He said his client had been forced to put her nursing career on hold as a result of the assault allegations against her.
Mr O’Brien said he did not condone violence but he said the facts were that Ms McGinley was Ms McCarron’s best friend of seven years and was a Godmother to her son.
He added that Ms McGinley had even cooked for Ms McCarron’s son earlier that day because it was his birthday.
“This young lady had introduced this man into her life and into the lives of her two children. She saw a future with this man and talked about him with her best friend,” said Mr O’Brien.
Considering judgement in the case, Judge Alan Mitchell asked if Ms McCarron and Mr Tinney were still in a relationship and was told they were not.
He said that on the night of the incident the best thing Ms McCarron could have done was to have turned on her heels and had nothing more to do with McGinley or Tinney.
Addressing Ms McCarron, who was accompanied by her mother to court, Judge Mitchell said he was not going to let her off entirely, however.
He said he felt that some donation to charity would be appropriate.
“I might be able to see what you did but I’m not condoning it,” he said before adding that what had happened to her did not justify her assaulting McGinley or Tinney in any way.
He added that a message had to be sent out that there is a right and a wrong way with dealing with issues and people cannot take the law into their own hands.
He said that if Ms McCarron, of St Eunan’s Terrace in Raphoe, made a donation of €500 to St Vincent de Paul then he would strike out the charges and apply the Probation Act.
He stressed that it should be noted that no order for compensation was to be given to Ms McGinley or Mr Tinney.
Ms McCarron later presented a receipt for the donation and the cases were struck out.