Keady teacher Patrick Hollywood who threatened people with 'visits from IRA men' jailed

A Co Armagh maths teacher and high school vice principal who sent a “deluge” of threatening and intimidating letters to staff and managers at CCEA and CCMS was handed a four year sentence on Friday.

Patrick Hollywood, 41, threatened the lives of his victims and some of their children with visits from balaclava wearing IRA men.

Some of them watched proceedings at Newry Crown Court where Judge Gordon Kerr QC ordered him to serve two years in jail and two under supervised licence conditions. 

Commenting that among the catalogue of charges against Hollywood “the most serious are the threats to kill,” the judge also imposed five-year restraining orders in their favour, banning Hollywood from contacting them. 

Jailing the disgraced maths teacher, Judge Kerr said Hollywood’s “planned and sophisticated” behaviour was aggravated because he had made multiple threats to multiple victims whose fear was increased when he referenced the IRA and the offences were “carefully designed to achieve his purpose to dismiss sanctions on his appeal".

Hollywood, from the Upper Fathom Road in Newry and who was a teacher and vice principal at St Patrick's High School in Keady, entered guilty pleas to seven charges of making a threat to kill, six of harassment, four of attempted intimidation and single counts of forgery and causing another person to fear that violence would be used against them, all committed between 31 December 2016 and 1 December 2018. 

Having been sanctioned for helping pupils cheat on maths exams, Hollywood faced losing his job and career and his campaign of fear and intimidation was designed to stop those sanctions.

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