Prison warder loses defamation case over affair

A prison officer at Mountjoy Prison has told the Circuit Civil Court he had a relationship with the wife of a prisoner who was in the Dublin jail at the time.

Paul Moles, aged 41, of Park Lane, Grangerath, Colpe Road, Co Meath, yesterday failed in a €50,000 defamation claim against the Irish Daily Star newspaper which, in Apr 2010, exposed his affair. He now faces legal costs of more than €20,000.

Judge Jacqueline Linnane said the Irish Daily Star’s lead story that an unidentified married prison officer at Ireland’s toughest jail had been suspended over allegations he had slept with an inmate’s wife was true.

Judge Linnane told the Star’s barrister Shane English that Mr Moles had admitted in cross-examination that the article, under the headline “Jailer’s Sex with Con’s Wife,” was, in the main, true.

The judge did not accept that a reference in the article to complaints against the prison warder by other women, that he asked for their phone numbers, was capable of inferring the defamatory meaning Mr Moles alleged.

Judge Linnane said Mr Moles had not been identified in the article and three of his friends and colleagues — ex-soldier and best man at his wedding, Peter Murphy, and prison officers John Brennan and Pat Brompton — had been able to identify him only because they had previous knowledge of his suspension from his job pending an investigation.

Seamus O’Tuathail, SC, counsel for Mr Moles, claimed the article contained defamatory remarks and had held him out to be a “sexual predator”.

He agreed with Mr English that the article was “in the main true” and had not identified him in any way.

The judge also dismissed Mr Moles’s application for the publication of a correction by the newspaper.