Marie McGowan, an old woman with dementia was violently attacked, beaten, and her head slammed in a trash bin because a man thought she was a trans woman.
Alex Bailey, 30, attacked Marie McGowan, 86, in the early hours of the morning on September 1st, 2022, after she got lost trying to find her way home. He kept attacking her, over and over again, for 42 minutes before passersby noticed and helped her escape him. Bailey told her rescuers that McGowan was a dangerous pedophile.
“I really thought I was going to be dead,” she told the Dublin police, as she was being treated for a broken nose and blood loss. She was also robbed in the attack.
In a victim impact statement, Marie MacGowan’s son, Jack, stated that the assault “nearly killed her” and she required 24/7 specialist care for months afterwards.
“It has impacted her life in a major way and significantly reduced her quality of life,” he said. She also suffered bouts of physical shaking, did not sleep well, and has had to move into a nursing home due to “fall risks”, he said.
He added that his mother had become obsessed with her “near-death experience,” regularly repeating the words, “please stop killing me” and “are you trying to kill me?”
According to Bailey’s lawyers, he was intoxicated at the time, and suffered “the delusional belief that the victim was a predatory pedophile,” and either a cross-dresser or a transgender woman (he didn’t distinguish between the two). Bailey had no criminal record before the assault, and claims not to remember the event.
On Friday, the Irish judge announced a sentence of three years in jail, with the final six months suspended conditionally. Including time served, this means he has less than two years to go. She did not take into account the fact that Bailey intended to beat an elderly trans woman to death just for existing in public, and is only remorseful that his victim turned out not to be trans, but did take into account his good work history.
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