Web of lies: How Sonya Egan falsely accused a garda, a lawyer, and social workers of horrific abuse

Sonya Egan, right, with her solicitor Eimear Griffin at Cork Court. Picture: Cork Courts

Sonya Egan, who was jailed for four years for telling career-ending lies against some victims and lies that caused deep personal trauma to others, effectively made elaborate false reports against anyone she perceived to be crossing her.

That was how Detective Sergeant James Buckley summarised the unfathomable damage caused to nine professional people by the 43-year-old woman who has finally acknowledged that she is a pathological liar.

After leaving home at the age of 14 or 15, she was in some form of State care run at the time by the Southern Health Board until she reached the age of 18.

False allegations

A lot of the false allegations began with a social worker she met around that time and maintained email contact with for several years.

“However, from mid-2015 they became quite sinister. She was telling him that she was his half-sister. He was not close to his mother but she claimed that his mother had a child in Syria in 1979 and that the child was given up for adoption. That child was allegedly her.

“He was bombarded with emails from the accused but also from various other persons, who were in fact the accused using different names. He made a complaint of harassment. These complaints were the catalyst for what followed.” 

She lied that he had sexually abused her for years before and after she was 18 years old. She lied that he ‘pimped her out’ to other men and that he did likewise with other girls. She accused him of human trafficking and sexually abusing others.

He was only one of the victims. Allegations of sexual abuse were also made against a senior garda, a lawyer, and others in the area of social work. An allegation of a physical assault on her was made against a politician.

She now accepts that none of it was true and says she is sorry. As well as pleading guilty to all charges she further stated that she was formally retracting in writing each and every allegation made against the nine injured parties.

Ronan Munro, defence senior counsel, said: “It is very hard to know what is the truth, and what is made up when you are talking to Sonya Egan. It is hard to keep up with the allegations she is making. They are often made in very vivid terms.” 

Det Sgt Buckley said: “Some of the allegations run to 33 pages.” Mr Munro added: “Very detailed, even though they are untrue.” 

In one of her most lurid false claims, she said she was forced by one man to have sex with another man while a pornographic video was made, and which she had in her possession. However, she has never produced such a video.

A friend of Sonya Egan when they were both teenagers said that even at the time, she loved the drama and kept coming up with stories, like that she was once homeless, that she was going to Oxford to study law, and other made-up stories. 

The friend said, looking back on that time: “I wondered if it was all lies and does she believe it to be true or does she know it is all lies. There is something very wrong with her. I thought they were all tall stories. It was too much.” 

Modus operandi

Mr Munro said her modus operandi appeared to be to target people with lies because she felt they crossed her.

The defence senior counsel suggested that it might be of some comfort to the nine injured parties that Sonya Egan had instructed her lawyers that as well as pleading guilty to all the charges she wanted to make a formal retraction of all the lies that she had told about people.

This was in contrast to a case last year where she pleaded guilty to harassment of two people in similar circumstances but as soon as she left court she put it up on Facebook that she was only pleading guilty for the sake of her children, thereby undermining her guilty pleas.

A psychologist’s report found her to have a borderline personality disorder where she was emotionally dysregulated, oscillating between, for instance, cheerfulness and hostility.

“She accepts she has a problem with fabricating information. She has struggled with this since she was a teenager. She tells lies to make herself more interesting and to attack others when she feels victimised.

“It would make your hair stand on end to hear what the victims must have gone through, with the allegations that were made,” said Mr Munro.

Hunger strike

He said Sonya Egan has been on hunger strike in prison for the past fortnight and added: “She is still clearly in a conflicted state. I am not saying for a moment this lady has left it all behind her, not at all. 

"She is in a padded cell under observation.” 

Sonya Egan admitted eight counts of making false statements and six counts of making false reports against the six men and three women, alleging to the gardaí that the injured party in each count had committed some offence, on various dates between 2016 and 2021.

The false statements and reports were made at the Bridewell Garda stations in Dublin and Cork and at Mayfield, Watercourse Rd, and Anglesea Street Garda stations, all in Cork.

Sonya Egan was living at The Lawn, Lios Cara, Killeens, Co Cork.