Jailed ex-garda Paul Moody will not face charges over historical sex abuse allegations

TheSunday Independent revealed that the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has informed specialist gardaí in Dublin that there is insufficient evidence to charge the 42-year-old with the alleged sexual offences.

Gardaí attached to a specialist Divisional Protective Services Bureau (DPSU) in Dublin arrested Moody last year over the allegations. It is understood that a statement of complaint was made against him relating to alleged incidents of “serious and sustained” sexual abuse over a number of years.

A source said that despite the DPP’s recent direction that Moody should not be criminally charged over these alleged offences, the case “remains open”.

Moody’s arrest over the allegations took place before the former garda was jailed last July for coercive control.

On July 26, he was sent to prison for three years and three months for a four-year campaign of harassment using threats, assaults and coercive control against his cancer-stricken ex-partner.

The abuse came to light when he voluntarily handed in his mobile phone to gardaí after making a false allegation against one of her relatives.

In her victim impact statement, the former garda’s victim said Moody told her the only reason he had visited her while she was ill in hospital was to “watch you bleed to death”.

The court heard Moody sent the woman more than 30,000 messages over the four years. In one 14-hour period in July 2018 he sent her 652 messages — one message every 90 seconds.

The messages were described in court as threatening, vile and abusive. In one message he described her as being “riddled with cancer”, in another, while she was on holiday without him, he said he hoped she would “get raped and bleed”.

In another, after they had a row while on holiday together, he messaged her the following morning and said she was “flaunting your body around the pool” calling her a “dirtbox” and a “scumbag”.

He threatened to stick a knife in her in one voice message. He also took photos of her naked, unbeknownst to her and threatened to post them online.

Moody, of St Raphael’s Manor, Celbridge, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to a charge of coercive control in relation to the woman on dates between January 1, 2019 and November 30, 2020. The law for the offence came into effect in January 2019.

Sentencing him, Judge Martin Nolan noted that the maximum sentence available to the court for this offence was five years. He said Moody's behaviour was at the highest end of the offence but the court had to take Moody's guilty plea into consideration and he reduced a five-year headline sentence to three years and three months.

He said Moody had carried out a catalogue of vile and humiliating criminal misbehaviour. He said he abused his position as a garda to obtain information which he used to harass and humiliate the victim and he also endangered her life by driving recklessly at one point.

The guilty plea was accepted on the basis of full facts in relation to a further 19 counts including harassment, assault causing harm, criminal damage, threats to cause criminal damage, endangerment, theft and threats to kill.

Moody joined the gardaí in 2000 but was suspended from duty in March 2021, following a search of his home arising out of this investigation. Sean Gillane SC, defending, told the court that his client would resign from An Garda Síochána.