By Ann O'Loughlin

A mother and her three Irish children will not have to return to Pakistan where their father wants them to live following a Supreme Court ruling.

The woman fears she will be killed if she were to return to Pakistan where, while living there, she says she was beaten by her husband and his two brothers because of her efforts to get back with her children to Ireland.

She fled Pakistan with her children in November 2015.

She has since then been opposing legal efforts by her husband seeking the childrens' return on foot of an order issued by a court in Lahore.

In May 2017, the High Court rejected his case. The Court of Appeal also rejected it last March.

Last month the Supreme Court, in a written determination, refused to grant him a further appeal saying the interests of justice did not justifying doing so.

The High Court heard that in the early 2000s, the then-18 year old woman underwent an arranged marriage with her 32 year old husband in Pakistan.

They lived in Ireland where he worked in a professional capacity. They had three children, all born in Ireland, two of whom are now teens.

She described the marriage as having no friendship, that she saw him as superior and never questioned what he told her to do at least in the early days.

He was very anxious that the children would live in an Islamic culture for a period of time, she said.

The husband said that in the 18 months the children lived in Pakistan, between 2014 and 2015, they were habitually resident there, went to a private school and were "treated like royalty" by his extended family with whom they lived.

He claimed she made efforts to alienate the children from him, that there had been no true access to them for him since their arrival in Ireland and that they could only have a meaningful relationship with both parents if they return to Pakistan.

He also claimed his wife had made multiple suicide attempts in the presence of the children, regularly beat them and, in general terms, she was unstable.

The High Court judge who refused his application said he also felt he ought to have been praised for the "sacrifice in terms of lack of sexual intercourse" with his wife and he noted that, in his culture, a wife does not have an entitlement to refuse sex with her husband.

She told the court there had never been a set date during conversations about plans to go to Pakistan until after she obtained a protection order against him here.

He threatened to leave her and to stop giving her money if she refused to go.

She described a stark change on her arrival in Pakistan where, although they had a new house, they did not move into it and she lived with her mother-in-law and extended family.

In an April 2015 incident when she demanded the children's passports, she said her husband and his brothers slapped and kicked her until she passed out.

The children witnessed this and cleaned blood from her face, she said.

The husband claimed he "manually handled" her, and slapped her, but did not kick her, during this incident because he was trying to take a knife from her after she threatened to commit suicide.

She denied this and said she never attempted suicide because she would not want to leave her children behind.

With the help of her own family she managed to get temporary passports for her children and got herself and them back to Ireland in November 2015.

She was not aware or informed of an order from a Lahore court preventing her removing the children, she said.

A court-appointed independent assessor from Bernardos reported that the best interests of the children would be served by remaining in Ireland.

The High Court found the children had a more substantial degree of connection with Ireland than Pakistan.

The Court of Appeal (CoA), in one of its unanimous judgments rejecting his appeal, was critical of the delay in the case being dealt with by the High Court and of the unsatisfactory and unfair interventions made by the judge during the husband's cross-examination of his wife.

However, in two concurring judgments, the CoA said it was in the interests of the children that the appeal be rejected.