A jury found the 52-year-old man, who cannot be named, guilty of coercive control, intimidation, assault and 12 counts of assault causing harm.

Human rights lawyer Noeline Blackwell, CEO of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, said the landmark case had “rattled the cages of the legislation”.

Ms Blackwell told Newstalk that the law has “been totally tested now through the courts” and the trial had shown that it was an “important piece” of legislation.

She explained: “The fact that someone was in fear that they would be assaulted again and so did something because somebody else manipulated them – all of these things had to be taken as separate charges [prior to the 2018 Act] and they did not show the proper picture of intimate abuse.

“Intimate abuse is where one partner abuses the other in a way that manipulates them, that isolates them and that coerces them.

“So, this criminal offence, which has now been thoroughly tested in the Circuit Court, has shown that this really wasn’t just an incident.

“This was a pattern of behaviour and it is a pattern of behaviour that is regularly repeated in intimate violence where people will take whatever tools they have in order to abuse somebody.

“The person they are abusing is the person whom the person may be entitled to trust the most.

“In a sense it is a way of recognising that in a person’s own home, in the intimate sphere, great damage can be done and it wasn’t put together in this way until the Domestic Violence Act introduced coercive control.”