Mayo man who subjected partner to years of abuse and 'mental torture' is jailed

Isabel Hayes

A man who subjected his partner to seven years of domestic violence, beatings, sexual assault and “mental torture” before absconding from the country has been jailed for eight years.

Aspiring photographer Mark White (54) would “fly into a rage” and be “frothing at the mouth” over minor matters such as his partner using the wrong cooking oil or not having clean socks ready for him, the Central Criminal Court heard.

On various occasions between 2010 and 2017, he pushed her down the stairs, beat her with the leg of a broken coffee table when she was 24 weeks pregnant, broke three bones in her cheek and drove a car towards her at high speed, a local detective told White's sentence hearing.

He held a knife to her throat before making her kneel to apologise for a minor issue on another occasion and choked her on the day of their child's first birthday party until she couldn't breathe. A number of violent incidents took place in front of the couple's two young children.

The woman wished for White to be named in reporting the case, but did not wish to be named herself, Bernard Condon SC, prosecuting, told the court.

On one occasion, the woman came home from a dental appointment to find their then three-year-old daughter in a distraught state. The court heard the little girl had pointed to the Beast character from Beauty And The Beast and told her father: “Look daddy, he's angry like you.”

The man told the woman their child was “evil and vindictive” and when the woman challenged his behaviour, he punched her about 20 times, lifted her by the hair and made her kneel before him to apologise.

On another occasion, he anally digitally penetrated her as she begged him to stop, telling her afterwards she was a “kinky bitch”.

In her victim impact statement which she read out in court, the woman said living with White was seven years of “mental torture” and she truly believed he was going to kill her.

“I knew I had to find a way out,” she told the court. “I saw the fear in my daughter's eyes and I knew I had to escape. She will never know it, but she saved me.”

White, of Hazel Lawns, Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo and formerly of Monkstown, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty to six counts of assault causing harm, one count of threatening to kill and one count of sexual assault at the family home within the State on dates between 2010 and 2017.

After the relationship ended, the woman went to gardai and an interview was arranged with White in 2019. Before this could take place, he left the jurisdiction and is believed to have been living in France and Spain in the intervening years. He operated a business out of a Paris address.

When a European Arrest Warrant was sought, White informed authorities he would return home. He was arrested at Dublin Airport in November 2024. He has one previous conviction for assaulting another woman, the court heard.

Sentencing him on Monday, Mr Justice Paul McDermott said White was an intelligent man of “extremely short temper” who was capable of “serious acts of violence”.

He said White inflicted a series of physical assaults on his partner, the mother of his children. He said the assault he carried out when she was 24 weeks pregnant was “despicable and abhorrent”. He noted some of the assaults took place in front of their children.

White was “controlling and abusive” and his partner's life was “dominated by his rage and self-indulgent bouts of temper”. It was “domestic violence of a serious nature”, the judge noted.

Taking mitigating factors into account, including White's guilty pleas, Mr Justice McDermott set sentences of two years and six months for the assaults and three years and six months for both the threat to kill and sexual assault offences.

Taking into account the fact the offending occurred over a long period and that it was calculated, humiliating and degrading in relation to the sexual assault, the judge said a consecutive sentence was required.

He set a headline sentence of 11 years which he reduced to nine years and six months. He suspended the final 18 months of the sentence on a number of conditions, including that White engage with any programmes as recommended by the Probation Service.

He ordered White be subject to a post-release supervision order for 20 years and ordered him to have no contact with his former partner for a period of seven years upon his release from custody.

At an earlier sentence hearing, the woman told the court that White made “deliberate choices that caused lasting harm and changed my life in many ways”.

“In 2010, he pushed me down the stairs,” she said. “That was the start of years of abuse and control in which I was constantly anxious and fearful.”

In relation to the beating she endured at his hands when she was pregnant, she said she was terrified she would lose her baby. “I could not protect myself,” she said. “I was completely vulnerable and he chose to attack me anyway.”

Referring to an incident when White held a knife to her throat for putting chips into a pan too quickly and splashing some oil, she said she believed she was going to die and that her children would witness it.

“Later that same year he sexually assaulted me,” she said. “I was left feeling violated, degraded and utterly powerless.”

The woman said the psychological effect the abuse had on her was profound. “I was no longer a person, just a plaything, something he could use for his own satisfactions.”

“I have never known cruelty like this before.”

She said he isolated her from family and friends and controlled every element of her life, including what clothes she wore. The court heard the woman suffers from severe PTSD as a result of the abuse, which she described as “life-long harm”.

“I'm not asking for pity,” she said. “I'm asking the court to realise the seriousness of this abuse and ensure appropriate measures are taken, including a no contact order.” The woman also asked that “steps be taken to prevent this from happening to anyone else in the future.”

“I chose to tell the truth,” she said. “I endured, I survived. Now I live my life on my own terms.”

In his plea of mitigation, defence counsel, John Berry SC, said the Probation Report referred to the man “deflecting and minimising” his offending. But he said the man “accepts responsibility for what he did” and wishes to apologise to the woman.

He asked the court to take into account White's guilty pleas, which were entered shortly before the trial date and which saved the woman from having to give evidence before a jury. He is willing to engage with the Probation Service, the court heard.