Gang members jailed for 'RAT' branding assault
Eoin Reynolds
Five members of a Dublin criminal gang will serve prison terms between three and eight-and-a-half years for an assault where the victim was waterboarded, beaten with an iron bar, threatened with being raped using a stick and branded with the word "RAT" on his face and torso.
Judge Karen O'Connor, sitting with Judge Sarah Berkeley and Judge Fiona Lydon, said the facts of the case were "shocking" and involved the use of several weapons designed to inflict injury and terror on the victim. She said the court had difficulty describing what had happened, as words like "dreadful, horrendous and frightening are not sufficient to describe the horror".
The branding marks on the victim's face were designed to "maximise the visibility of his [the victim's] humiliation", she said, and the actions of the defendants "bypass any notion of humanity".
The judge said the court also could not attach much weight to expressions of remorse by four of the accused, who she said had entered guilty pleas only after the trial had begun and when the victim, Barry Moore (35) had been summoned to court by a warrant.
Brothers Jason Hennessy (29) and Brandon Hennessy (23), of Sheephill Avenue, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15 and Kenneth Fitzsimons (46) and his son Dean Fitzsimons (26) of Castlecurragh Vale, Mulhuddart, Dublin were originally charged with various offences, including causing serious harm and false imprisonment of Moore, both of which carry potential life sentences.
After Moore refused to give evidence last year, the State accepted pleas of guilty to assault causing harm, an offence that carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.
Before it became apparent that Moore was not going to give evidence, Devon Hennessy (30), of Edgewood Lawns, Corduff, Dublin 15 pleaded guilty to falsely imprisoning Moore and to assisting a criminal organisation to inflict serious harm on Moore.
The judge imposed the shortest sentence of three years on Devon Hennessy as, she said, he was the only one of the five who tried to intervene on Moore's behalf. He was also the only one who entered an early guilty plea.
The judge said the offending of Jason Hennessy and Dean Fitzsimons warranted headline sentences at the maximum 10 years. In each case, she reduced that to eight-and-a-half years having considered their late guilty pleas and other mitigating factors.
Brandon Hennessy would have received the same sentence, but the judge said he is already serving a term that will expire in February 2028. She therefore imposed a six-year sentence which will run consecutive to that sentence.
Kenneth Fitzsimons was jailed for eight years. The judge noted that he did not use the branding iron or hold the victim down.
All sentences, except that imposed on Brandon Hennessy, are backdated to February 17th, 2025 when they each went into custody on this charge.
Trial
At the trial last year, Det Gda Stuart Gleeson said he interviewed Moore on February 13th, 2025, the day after the assault.
In his account to Gda Gleeson, Moore said he called to Jason Hennessy's home in Sheephill Avenue to buy a tracksuit. He arrived at about 6.15pm and entered through a rear gate into a shed at the back of the property where he met Devon and Jason Hennessy.
He said they chatted for about 15 minutes, during which time Brandon Hennessy and Ken Fitzsimons arrived. As Moore was showing Ken Fitzsimons a photograph on his phone, he said Jason Hennessy "smashed" the phone out of his hands and boxed him.
He said: "It was a punch to my jaw, I was stunned. I asked Jason, what did you do that for? I was after falling on the ground and Devon jumped up and began to punch me in the head."
He said Jason Hennessy struck him and shouted: "You know what this is about, I want the truth." Ken Fitzsimons, he said, went to the garden and came back with a "breaker bar", which Moore described as "five feet of solid steel".
He said Ken Fitzsimons "walloped" him seven or eight times on the legs with the bar before striking his right arm, breaking it.
He said Jason Hennessy told him to "tell us the truth" and asked what he, Moore, had said to two named people. Moore told them he hadn't seen the two people for more than a year and begged to be allowed to leave.
Brandon Hennessy, he said, "came in like a mad man, screaming at me". He said Brandon said he had previously lied to Moore when he told him that they [the Hennessys] didn't have bullet proof windows at the top of the house. He said Brandon told him: "I told you on purpose because I knew you would go back and tell the lads."
Moore said Brandon took the breaker bar and struck him repeatedly over the body. Devon Hennessy, he said, told Brandon to stop because he would kill him. Moore heard Brandon telling his brother: "If you don't like it, go out the back."
Jason Hennessy left and returned to the shed with a blue camping stove and a "cattle marker" with 'RAT' on it. Moore said Jason Hennessy used the gas stove to heat the marker.
"I was pleading with all four of them to let me leave, but they wouldn't," he said. Moore said Dean Fitzsimons then entered through the back door of the shed and said: "I've been waiting on you," before picking up the breaker bar and hitting Moore. Ken Fitzsimons, he said, picked up an axe and struck him with the blunt side.
Dean Fitzsimons, he said, threatened to cut off his ears with a Stanley knife before "waterboarding" him using a towel and a bucket of water.
Moore said: "I thought I was going to drown. I couldn't breathe. I thought I was going to be murdered."
Moore alleged that Dean took the towel away and, standing above him, told him to tell the truth or he would "leave in a body bag".
"I kept saying I knew nothing and begging, let me go," he said. Jason Hennessy, he said, took the cattle marker and used it on his stomach first. Moore said: "I was screaming, I never felt such pain before. I was pleading for mercy."
Dean Fitzsimons, he said, put the Stanley knife to his ear but Jason Hennessy said, "not yet" and started beating Moore before tying him up with a dog lead.
When he was tied, Moore said they branded him on his back and while Devon asked them to stop, they kept beating him. He said that Jason Hennessy insisted that he would not be allowed to leave until telling the truth. Moore said he told them: "I can't talk because I don't know anything."
He said Jason Hennessy wanted to know who set him up at Costa Coffee and pressed the hot iron against his head before placing it back on the stove. Brandon and Dean, he said, held his arms while Jason Hennessy branded him on the forehead, holding it for seven or eight seconds. "I was screaming with pain, pleading to let me go," Moore said.
He said he heard Brandon saying they should pull down his tracksuit and "rape him with a stick" before Dean stood on his back and "danced" on his neck, choking him. Devon Hennessy, he said, asked them to let Moore go.
Moore said Dean "rammed" the iron into the right side of his head for seven or eight seconds before Jason Henessy Jr told him to get up and allowed him to leave. He recalled stumbling to his car and struggling to start the engine. He called to his father's house nearby and was taken to hospital by ambulance.
"I was kept against my will. I did not look for this. My face and body are destroyed. They held me hostage and beat me for over one hour. I thought I would die several times. I hope these markings are not permanent."
At a previous hearing, Sgt Emma Ryan told the court that Moore declined to give evidence at the trial for four of the defendants late last year "owing to the fact that he was afraid".
Sgt Ryan told Garnet Orange SC, for the prosecution, that during the assault, the victim suffered a fractured elbow from a blow of an iron bar and multiple small stab wounds to his legs. She said gardaí found the cattle branding iron used on Moore in an area of waste ground.
Sgt Ryan said that at the time of the assault, there was a feud between the Hennessys and another organised crime gang based in Finglas. Jason Hennessy referenced two members of that gang when demanding that Moore "tell the truth" about what he said to those individuals.
Jason referenced the feud again when he demanded to know who had set him up for an attack while he was at a Costa coffee shop, Sgt Ryan said.
Jason Hennessy Snr, the father of Devon, Brandon and Jason, was shot dead in Browne's Steakhouse in Blanchardstown on Christmas Eve, 2023. The gunman, Tristan Sherry, was beaten to death at the scene.
