Margaret Loftus: Domestic abuse survivor’s ordeal inside An Garda Síochána exposed

Margaret, her husband Trevor Bolger, and their two children had travelled down for a birthday party for Margaret’s brother.

The couple were both gardaí, stationed in Ballymun on the northside of Dublin.

It was October 30, 2012.

They attended the party in a pub but left about midnight, before most of her family.

Back at the house, they went to the bedroom.

Margaret later said Bolger was pacing around, punching the walls, irate that his wife had not stood by his side in the pub.

“Why do you keep doing this to me,” he said repeatedly.

Then he grabbed her by the throat and pushed her up against the wall. He kept shouting at her.

She begged him to stop, promised she would never speak to her family again, that they would never have to come to Mayo again.

“This assault took place in my family home, my childhood bedroom, the one place I would have called the safest place on earth with my parents’ bedroom right next door,” Margaret said in a victim impact statement.

"My two children who were aged two and eight months, were also present in my bedroom on that night. They were babies. I was still breastfeeding my eight-month-old."

Eventually, Bolger calmed down.

He fell asleep and Margaret prayed for the safety of her and her children.

Her parents arrived home from the party at about 2am.

At 8am the next morning, she crept out of the bedroom and went to wake her father.

She asked her father to stand beside her in the kitchen when Bolger came down.

“I felt if I didn’t end the marriage, my life would be at risk,” she said.

“With the support and strength of my father, I told Trevor our marriage was over and I would never allow him assault me ever again.

The violence he had shown the night before was terrifying. My head was still aching all over.

On April 28 last, Bolger pleaded guilty to assault at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

He had faced other charges but these were dropped as part of a plea deal.

At a sentencing hearing last Wednesday, the court was told details of the assault and heard Margaret Loftus give her victim impact statement.

Her father Michael sat beside her in the witness box as he had stood beside her 13 years ago, when she told Bolger their marriage was over.

Margaret Loftus’s experience of domestic violence is a shocking example of a phenomenon that is known to be widespread.

The nature of it ensures what happens behind closed doors often stays there.

What is unique about her case is that both she and her husband were serving gardaí at the time.

Two sides of An Garda Síochána

Her experience illustrates two sides of An Garda Síochána when it comes to cases like this.

On one level, she received no support, felt shunned and believes her attempt to start a new life was thwarted because of what she had revealed.

However, once her situation was conveyed to a very senior management figure, and the protective services within the force began investigating, the handling of the case was perfectly professional.

Margaret Loftus graduated from the Garda College in Templemore in 2006.

She was stationed in Ballymun, north Dublin, and two years later she met Bolger, who was based in the same station.

The following year, in the course of work, she suffered a serious assault.

This resulted in her being off duty for a prolonged period.

Later, she would say this scenario ensured she quickly became dependent on Bolger, literally in the early stages of her recovery when the physical injuries confined her movement.

For a long period, she didn’t leave the house.

Later, she would say the relationship was thus flawed from the start.

In her statements to the gardaí, Margaret gave a detailed account of her marriage to Bolger.

As he pleaded guilty to the assault charge, the bulk of this was not aired in court.

But the nadir came with the incident in Mayo in October 2012. Margaret told him it was over.

The months that followed were extremely stressful for her.

I felt that colleagues knew what had happened that night in Mayo and treated me differently and there was stigma attached to me.

“I felt people were keeping their distance from me for standing up for myself. I felt shame, when he was the one who needed to hang his head in shame.

“I joined An Garda Síochána as I had a strong sense of truth and justice. Being a victim and on the other side of the fence has been a very difficult experience for me.”

Within weeks of that incident, Trevor Bolger checked himself into a psychiatric facility to seek help.

On exiting the institution, he went back to work.

He was at this point working in the drugs unit and had access to firearms.

Barring order

Two months after the assault in Mayo, Margaret attended court and obtained a barring order.

In circumstances where a garda is to be issued with a barring order, it would be normal for the task to be completed by another garda.

If this were done, it would follow there was knowledge within the force of Trevor Bolger’s violence.

Apart from that, Margaret let her superior officer know what exactly had gone on.

“Some of them [gardaí] were saying did you make a statement,” she told the Irish Examiner.

“It was like nobody wanted to do anything unless they had to. I was a victim at the time. I was doing my utmost to keep myself and the kids alive.

I told all these people in positions of power that this was going on and I was made to feel there was nothing wrong with this behaviour, that it was normal.

“Nobody said, ‘can I help you, this fellow should be investigated'. I told them absolutely everything and they decided to do nothing. This wasn’t a case of me refusing to make a statement.”

Life in turmoil

Over the following years, Margaret Loftus’s life was thrown into turmoil.

She felt she was getting no support from colleagues or superior officers.

In June 2013, she request a transfer. She wanted to go back to the west of Ireland.

Her transfer request included a covering letter detailing her domestic circumstances.

She was told by her district officer she would be facilitated.

At this stage, it should have been plain to all in An Garda Síochána what she had endured.

Six months later, she received notice she had got a transfer, not to Mayo, which she had requested, but Sligo.

This would necessitate an hour-and-a-half commute from her hometown, but at least it was a start.

She made arrangements to rent a property near to her parents.

Then, in the week before Christmas 2013, after she relocated in anticipation of a new start, a friend contacted her to inform she had seen her name in a circular.

Her transfer had been cancelled. She was not informed why the transfer was not going ahead.

Margaret Loftus was devastated at this turn of events.

Apart from anything else, she now had to go back to Dublin and see if she could organise with her ex-husband that he vacate the family home as she was returning.

She had conversations with a number of senior officers but the only explanation she received was that the member who was due to transfer out of Sligo had since changed his mind.

She learned later this was not the case.

Transfer cancelled

She was told at one point her transfer being cancelled had nothing to do with her husband.

“I was just kept in the system, given no real reason why my transfer was denied,” she said.

Some senior gardaí appeared to be trying to help. One whom she encountered was shocked at what she told him.

She believes he tried to do something in assisting with her transfer, but it came to naught.

Finally, after four years, she was transferred to Castlebar.

In 2018, she wrote to Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy about her ongoing problems with her by then ex-husband.

“I have taken the liberty of enclosing my statement which sets out my story. I have no doubt that Trevor will somehow pass the blame to me.

“I simply want to be left alone to live my life. For this reason, I have no choice but to make this criminal complaint.”

She noted she had previously tried to make a complaint through the direct channels but without success.

“I knew at that stage if I went to anybody lower down the chain of command it would probably have gone nowhere,” she says.

Within days of the assistant commissioner receiving this letter, officers from the protective services division of An Garda Síochána were in touch with Margaret.

From there on, her experience of the work of the gardaí was all positive.

In her victim impact statement on Wednesday, she addressed the officers who had investigated the case.

“If every other member of An Garda Síochána did their job like you have, this country would have one of the best police forces in the world,” she said.

Bolger promoted

Trevor Bolger was questioned by investigating officers in 2019. At some point after this interview, but before he was formally charged, Bolger was promoted.

He went from being a ranking garda to detective.

This new posting also meant he had even greater access to firearms.

In late 2019, an item appeared in the media about this but did not mention any names.

According to sources within An Garda Síochána, soon after the media report, Bolger was relieved of his weapon.

When he was charged, he was suspended and has remained since then fully paid while on suspension.

Margaret Loftus also made a protected disclosure to Gsoc (since renamed Fiosrú) about her whole experience within An Garda Síochána through the period since it was first obvious what had been going on.

The Irish Examiner understands that because a criminal trial was pending, Bolger was entitled to discover the contents of the disclosure.

This is believed to be the first occasion in which a protected disclosure and a criminal investigation have taken place in tandem.

The result is that the investigation of the disclosure is potentially compromised because material that is ordinarily kept confidential had to be disclosed to Trevor Bolger.

Despite a professional investigation by An Garda Síochána, it took another seven years before the case reached court.

There were nearly two dozen court mentions or appearances before the trial was finally scheduled to begin on April 28.

Margaret Loftus resigned from An Garda Síochána, a career she had longed for in her youth, in 2022.

In response to a series of questions about the case, a statement was issued from the Garda Press office.

It noted in relation to a question about whether the treatment of Margaret Loftus by An Garda Síochána has been appropriate, that: “An Garda Siochana doesn’t comment on the conduct of Gsoc investigations.”

It also pointed to statements and commitments made by Commissioner Drew Harris that “there is zero tolerance for domestic abuse outside and inside of An Garda Siochana”.

“Commissioner Harris has consistently stated the need to suspend the small minority of gardaí who allegedly engage in serious criminal behaviour, such as domestic abuse, in order to protect individuals and society, and maintain public trust in An Garda Síochána.”

- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.