A man who assaulted a parent at his son’s school has been given a four month suspended sentence at Mullingar District Court.
Judge Conal Gibbons described the unprovoked attack as an intolerable, outrageous, and vicious assault against an innocent person in a school grounds.
“It is the most serious type of assault I can imagine, in a school where adults are supposed to behave themselves and give good example.”
Peter Farrell of 6 St Anthony’s Cottages, was at Mullingar Community College on January 29 2008 to meet with the school principal to discuss alleged bullying of a female student by his son who was 16 at the time.
As he entered the school he met the girl’s father and punched him in the mouth. He also pushed him up against a doorframe.
The injured party banged his head and suffered a split lip. He also lost a tooth.
Giving evidence, Mr Farrell said he did not know what came over him, and that it was a “spur of the moment response”.
The father of four said he was very stressed at the time, and had been trying to keep his son on the straight and narrow, to stop him from leaving school. His son, who is sitting his Leaving Certificate, is now doing well at school.
Mr Farrell apologised for his actions, saying “I want to rear my children, give them a good life, and try to be as good a parent as I can be, as good as anybody else is.”
Judge Gibbons said he could not recall an incident where an individual had been assaulted in such circumstances, and said it could not be contemplated or allowed.
“Schools depend on fairness every which way,” he said and added that Mr Farrell is part of the school community.
“Schools need parents to be active and proactive in dealing with issues. The principal has a difficult job and depends absolutely on parents, in particular in difficult circumstances with young people.”
He said that schools require parents’ back-up, their support and their good example.
“Every child in the school” knew about the incident, said the judge.
“What sort of example is that?” he asked and described as “drastic” the effect the incident would have had on the principal and board of management at the school.
He also commented on the impact the assault would have had on Mr Farrell’s 16-year-old son, saying that it was his actions and not those of the young person which had caused the problem.
The judge said that the seriousness of the assault merited a prison sentence of four months, but he suspended it for 12 months, acknowledging the way in which Mr Farrell had met the charge against him, and dealt with it in an open way.
