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An elderly couple has been given protection orders after alleging their adult son threatened his mother with two knives and told her and other family members he would “cut your heads off”.

Their adult daughter, who said her brother is a crack addict, also got a protection order from the emergency domestic violence court at Dolphin House in Dublin.

She told Judge Gerard Furlong that she, her parents and other family members were sitting around the kitchen table one evening recently when her brother came in shouting and demanding keys.

He lifted the table up and then grabbed two knives and threatened her mother, aged in her seventies, with them, she said. “She was just doing the crossword.”

Her brother, aged in his thirties, has been a crack addict for about nine or 10 years and has started to get “stuff” delivered to their home.

“I haven’t spoken to him for about 10 to 15 years but I had to defend my mother.”

Her brother pushed her, gardaí were called and they removed him, she said. Gardaí told the family the man was given a letter to go voluntarily to a psychiatric unit.

However, he returned to the house that same evening and threatened family members, describing them as “rats”, the woman said. “He threatens to kill anyone who comes to the house, to slice their heads off.”

When the judge said there was enough evidence for the couple to get an interim barring order against their son requiring him to leave the house, the father said he did not want to see him on the streets. “I’m kind of giving him a chance, I want to see what happens.”

In a separate ex parte (one side only represented) application on Friday, a mother got an interim barring order against her adult son.

He has had alcohol and drug issues for years but, after she got a barring order in 2022, he went for treatment and came out “a different man” for about a year, she said. He has relapsed since, the woman, becoming tearful, said.

She permitted him return home for a few days but that turned into months and he will not leave, she said. He is “abusive and aggressive”, she does not feel safe or respected in her home and he was physically abusive to her on an occasion last September, she said.

“I feel afraid,” she said. Grandchildren living with her are seeing this behaviour and she has “begged” her son to get a job and treatment. “I’m here with a heavy heart,” she said, weeping. “I love him.”

A woman who said she has pictures on her phone and doctors’ letters to support her claims that her ex partner had beaten her, fractured her spine, headbutted her and was “very possessive and controlling” during their four relationship got a protection order.

She was living in his home but she had left and is now in a hostel, she said. “I’m safe there now.”

In another case, a woman got a protection order against her estranged husband. “I go to bed scared,” she said.

Her husband moved into her home after they got married more than ten years ago and was verbally and physically abusive to her, including spitting at and pushing her and constantly undermining her, she said. He was “very controlling” in many aspects of her life, including financial.

She ended the relationship in Spring last year after he threatened to assault her and his status as an occupier of her house, a council house, has been removed, she said.

Since he left the property, he has tried to get her to resume the relationship, she said. He has a significant problem with alcohol and tablets and she felt sorry for him and had sometimes let him back into the house, she said.

Over the past month, he had become “very abusive” and she wanted no contact but he continues to come to the house, she said. He has no key but, after noticing he had removed a bolt from inside the front door, she changed the locks. He had insisted he had a room in the house and “will be back”. He has threatened to kill himself, saying he had “nothing to lose” and she is constantly fearful he might break in. “I just want it to stop.”