Journalist in defamation action tells court midwives 'work too hard to be tip-toeing around fathers'

Journalist Brenda Power has told a jury in a High Court defamation action that ‘midwives work too hard to be tip-toeing around fathers with lawyers on speed dial’.

The Sunday Times columnist is being sued, along with the newspaper, by Dubai-based property broker John McCauley over an article she wrote in March 2009 about him filming the birth of his baby daughter.

Brenda Power had told the court she believes John McCauley behaved appallingly by suing a midwife for €38,000 because she interrupted him filming the birth of his first daughter.

After he lost the case in 2009 she wrote "I've always suspected that there is a type of man who just can't get his head around the fact that he is not, actually the most important person in the room when his wife or girlfriend is having a baby. He can't face being an extra, there on sufferance. He has to be the director, the producer, the star."

Mr McCauley claims the article makes him look like ‘some kind of headcase running around with a camera’.

Defending her article Brenda Power said she still believes his actions were bizarre and the thought of a midwife being hauled before the courts for doing her job made her very cross.

She says she believes her article reflects the views of most normal people.