The recent court case whereby a garda was  acquitted of raping his wife but guilty of cruelty against his two daughters disclosed some uncomfortable truths about domestic violence.

The Central Criminal Court heard from his 24-year-old daughter, who he subjected to emotional abuse and assault from the age of six.

She testified that the family home had an atmosphere of ‘violence and threats’ and that it was more like a military barracks than anything else.

On weekends, if she didn’t get up at 10am, a jug of water was thrown over her.

When she turned 15, her loving father told her that her legs were the size of legs on a pool table and that she was a ‘disgrace’.

He forced her to go running daily and she could only get out of it by saying that she was having her period.

The younger girl, now 17, was – from the age of six until 2024 when her tyrannical dad was suspended from the force – also on the receiving end of his ‘emotional manipulation’.

He once made her eat a bucket of KFC until she got sick and always taunted her about her weight and appearance.

This girl described an incident when she was seven when her older brother refused to eat his dinner and their father placed a stick on the table and ordered them to finish their food by a certain time.

But the unsettling part of the case was not so much the reign of terror inflicted on an outwardly normal family – the parade of domestic violence cases before the courts, not to mention the savage familicides caused in longstanding cases of coercive control, makes us almost immune to grotesque details – but the fact that the 48-year-old man due for sentencing later this month has already moved on and has a child with his new partner.

What woman, we might think, would hook up with a guy with such a reputation, never mind bring a child into the situation?

Gender-based violence is a scourge in society and its prevalence seems to be increasing, yet are some women not guilty of looking for trouble or enabling it?

These responses are natural and often automatic, but they are also part of a pattern of victim-blaming which helps us avoid the complexities of domestic abuse to ultimately let abusers off the hook. The truth is that abusers are often charming and convincing characters, so this garda finding a replacement at lightning speed is far from unique.

Like serial abuser ex-garda Paul Moody, who subjected two partners in quick succession to terrifying abuse, this unidentified officer had his trusted Garda badge in his corner.

But even without that imprimatur, he likely could have done a number on a new woman, convincing her that his ex stitched him up and turned his children against him.

It’s also common in these situations for new partners to think that they are the ‘right’ women to make their men happy, unlike their predecessors who brought out the worst in them and drove them to hit out in rage, poor pets.

This woman, who took up with a garda facing trial for spousal rape and child cruelty, wouldn’t be the first to take a chance on reforming a broken character or to ignore warning bells to convince herself she’d found Prince Charming.

Yet her bringing an innocent child into an experiment that statistically is bound to explode in another orgy of violence seems reprehensible.

What future awaits that child when they get older and, through no fault of their own, fail to meet their overweening father’s standards of perfection?

But the truth is that for all we know, this woman may have had little choice in the matter of having a baby.

The honeymoon period of being love-bombed by her garda suitor may have been brief.

She may already have seen her partner’s mask drop and come up against his ugly craving for power and control. And if she hasn’t by now, she will inevitably realise like so many women before her, that there’s no such thing as ‘the right woman’ for abusive monsters – there’s just ‘the next woman’, the next sap, the next victim waiting in the wings for the next cycle of abuse.

No matter what despicable acts of cruelty they have committed, toxic men seem to have no difficulty getting another chance. It’s like they have radar for detecting, if not female desperation, then women who are attracted to domineering men, who lack the self-esteem to believe that they deserve not to live in fear.

The bestselling 1980s book Women Who Love Too Much became a cultural phenomenon, coining a term for women who remained in painful relationships, be they emotionally cold or intimidatory or violent. Often their mindset is forged in childhood at the hands of an abusive parent.

It’s almost as if, in the act of destroying their spouses and children, domestic abusers are also cultivating a future generation of victims for the abusers coming up after them. In that sense, their crime is twofold.

You don’t need to be a psychologist to guess that the wretched upbringing this dreadful garda inflicted on his two daughters might form a fertile ground for history to repeat itself. The best safeguard against that, and for reducing this age-old crime widespread throughout society, is that responsibility for it be uncompromisingly focused on the perpetrators rather than finding a woman to blame.

Meghan keeps her beady eyes to herself in Highgrove

While Harry and Meghan’s icebreaking meeting with King Charles was taking place, in an adjoining room at Highgrove, Chanel held an event honouring students who had completed a 24-week elite embroidery course.

I’m sure Meghan, whose love of crafts and cooking was celebrated in her With Love, Meghan Netflix series, couldn’t resist popping in to admire the students’ traditional hand-beading and embroidering for haute couture gowns.

On second thoughts, she probably didn’t. It would only have reminded her of her pathetic, amateurish and fourth-rate efforts.