‘Wrong for gardaí to inform locals about sex offender’

IT was not considered appropriate for gardaí to notify neighbours that a convicted sex offender is living among them a garda superintendent told the High Court yesterday.

While gardaí would take “sensible precautions” to protect the community in such circumstances, there would be “a big risk” that telling local people could create “hysteria” and lead to vigilantism, Supt Michael E Maher said.

If any member of the garda leaked information to the media that a convicted rapist, James O’Donoghue, was living with some relatives in Ballybunion, Co Kerry, in 1999, that member would have been acting without authorisation and in breach of the garda regulations, Chief Supt Maher, the officer in charge of the district containing Ballybunion, said.

He was giving evidence on the closing day of an action by Alan and Phyllis Gray, and their son Francis, of Drumalee Road, North Circular Road, Dublin, against the Minister for Justice and the State, alleging gardaí leaked information in April 1999 to the media that James O’Donoghue, a nephew of Mr and Mrs Gray, was staying with them in breach of their constitutional rights to privacy.

As a result of various media stories based on such information, they claim they were shunned by the local community, suffered mental distress, anxiety and personal injury and ultimately left Ballybunion and returned to Dublin.

The four-day hearing concluded yesterday and Mr Justice John Quirke reserved judgment.

In his evidence, Supt Maher agreed with Mark de Blacam SC that various garda documents containing information compiled by gardaí in 1999 relating to James O’Donoghue were confidential documents containing highly sensitive and confidential information.

Any disclosure to the media of either those documents or their contents would breach garda regulations, he said.

If a journalist contacted any member of the garda about such information, the appropriate action for that garda to take was to refer the journalist to the Garda Press Office or to himself as superintendent. He agreed it is vitally important that the dissemination of such information be controlled by the Garda Síochána and that disclosure of such information to the public or media could compromise a garda investigation, lead to an offender taking flight or damage innocent persons.

In response to Mr Justice Quirke, Supt Maher agreed gardaí are presented with a “difficult problem” when a sex offender moves into their area. Gardaí had a responsibility to protect persons in the area and, for that reason, all gardaí in the area would be circulated with information of the offender’s presence. As many gardaí as possible would also try to get to know the offender on a visual basis and would notify any sightings of him to a garda collator. If a report of a sex offence was made, gardaí would examine if the person was a potential suspect.

Gardaí would be conscious the offender had been convicted, had served his sentence and there might be no information suggesting he would reoffend.

However, they would have to take sensible precautions.

It would not have been appropriate either in 1999 or now to notify neighbours of the offender’s presence as there would be a big risk this could create hysteria, vigilantism and could result in a “bigger crime” than what gardaí were seeking to prevent. He was aware that journalists wrote reports including confidential information based on “Garda sources”. The Garda Commissioner was very concerned on a continuing basis about such “off the record claims” he said.