Thu Dec 23, 2021 – 11:59 am EST
CORK, Ireland (LifeSiteNews) – An Irish grandmother will spend Christmas in jail after she was handed a six-month sentence for refusing to wear a mask at a restaurant in Bandon, County Cork in the south west of the country.
Margaret Buttimer, 66, had been convicted of violating mask mandates on seven other occasions since the outbreak of COVID-19, telling one store owner that she was “only answerable to God” for her decision not to wear the face-covering.
Judge James McNulty accused Buttimer of “willful disregard for others” and “absurd selfishness” at Bandon District Court on December 16, despite countless experts and studies confirming the ineffectiveness of most masks.
Buttimer had repeatedly declined to leave Jake’s Restaurant in Bandon on November 17, or to don a face-covering, instead choosing to wait for police to arrive and arrest her after the head chef there called the Gardaí (Irish police force).
The grandmother, who entered a not guilty plea for refusing to wear a mask, was previously described in court as a “pleasant” woman who had lived an “unblemished” life, her only apparent crime being skepticism about the efficacy of face-coverings.
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