An ex-soldier was convicted for attacking three women as they were leaving a concert in Belfast.
There were three charges of assault that caused actual bodily harm and two of common assault. Michael McLoughlin, 48, from Brook Lodge in Portadown, County Armagh, pleaded guilty to all three.
People in the court heard that McLoughlin’s actions had a big effect on the women.
He was sentenced to two years and five months of jail time and five months of free time.
On June 27, 2019, three friends who had been to a concert in Belfast’s Botanic Gardens were leaving through Stranmillis Road. They were all hurt.
“Wasn’t the concert great?” one of them asked the man sitting on the bench as they walked by.
McLoughlin, who had broken up with his girlfriend and was at the concert with her, was verbally abusive.
When one of the women asked him about how he spoke, he became “highly abusive.” This is what the judge at Belfast Crown Court called him.
McLoughlin spit in the face of one of the women and then punched her to the ground. He then attacked another woman and started walking toward the Malone Road.
The third woman followed McLoughlin because she didn’t want him to get away from her two friends.
At the Wellington Park Hotel, when she caught up with him, he attacked her. She was then brought down and assaulted for a while.
One of her friends came to help her. As soon as she did, McLoughlin hit her in the face,
Police came to the scene, and when they arrested McLoughlin, he was very angry and disagreeable.
The next day, he told police that after getting split up from his partner at the concert, he was waiting at the gates for her.
He then made a lot of unsubstantiated and untrue claims about the women and said that he didn’t attack them.
It’s clear that McLoughlin is no longer telling the truth, says Judge Fowler. McLoughlin has since agreed to plead guilty to five assaults.
We learned that McLoughlin is an ex-soldier who worked as a dog handler for private security firms in Afghanistan. He was sentenced.
It’s possible that he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and a history of depression, but McLoughlin has turned down treatment for his poor mental health.
