The many victims of Sonya Egan's lies
Sonya Egan (right) with her solicitor Eimear Griffin. Picture: Cork Courts
Sonya Egan didn’t just tell a lie here and there.
Hers was not the feckless telling of an untruth to get out of a corner. Nor was it anything like the child idly tossing a pebble in the pond and watching the ripples flow. No. This was a woman who operated systematically, applying herself with fervour to the manufacturing of fictions about real people and spreading lies as far as she could with relentless energy. When she was up and at it, there was literally no stopping her.
If she had used the kind of zeal and determination that she used for her many crimes for something honest and worthwhile, there is no knowing what she could have achieved. Unfortunately, it is now abundantly clear what she did achieve — the demolition of lifelong careers, the destruction of lives, the creation of doubt around people working diligently and responsibly in sensitive areas.
She caused worlds of pain and trauma by creating and disseminating industrial quantities of poisonous lies.
And it was not just that individual lies had seismic effects on the lives of those she attacked — they were utterly voluminous. She would walk into a garda station, name someone, and say that he raped her. Or walk into another station, name someone else and say he runs a paedophile ring.
She did those things, but she made her allegations in outrageously lurid detail and at considerable length.
In one set of allegations against one of her unfortunate, innocent victims, she handed over a pre-prepared written statement of criminal complaint against one man that ran to 33 pages. By coincidence, she later made out another work of fiction in respect of a living, breathing person, and this too consisted of another 33 pages of lies.
Before even trying to grapple with the kind of stuff Sonya Egan was coming out with in the case for which she was jailed for four years this week, it is worth recalling one of the many lies that emerged from last year’s case where she was jailed for harassment.
She set up a fake email account purporting to be Jeremy Corbyn, then leader of the British Labour Party, where she claimed — in Mr Corbyn’s name — that he was Sonya Egan’s father.
In the present case, it all started with another concocted yarn about her own origins. She maintained email contact with a social worker she had known for a number of years until the emails got really weird.
She told the social worker, in a twisted tale worthy of an outrageous soap opera, that it turned out that she was his half-sister — that his mother had a child in Syria in 1979 and that the child was given up for adoption. And that she, Sonya Egan, was this child.
The social worker might have ignored this long-lost Syrian sister claim as something of idiotic nonsense. But he couldn’t ignore it. Because it came in a deluge of other emails that went down a distinctly sinister route. The bombardment of the social worker came from Egan’s own email address and from other addresses where she assumed the identity of others.
When he could take in no more, he made a complaint of harassment. But if he thought he was having a rough time from Sonya Egan up to then, he had only seen a fraction of what she was capable of. As soon as he made this complaint against her, it is hardly an overstatement to say that she unleashed hell.
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. She lied that he "pimped out" girls who were living in care in Ireland. She accused him of human trafficking, and sexually abusing others.
And the fabrications were not just generalised claims. She claimed that he drugged her up so that he could abuse her.
She said he physically hurt her.
Her complaints extended to a claim that he was influencing her psychiatrist to hike up her doses of medication. She said he forced her into prostitution to pay him money that she owed him.
A feature of the systematic process of lies told by Sonya Egan — who now admits to being a pathological liar in need of treatment — is that she created webs of lies against those collaterally connected to the social worker.
If the bomb of lies detonated when the social worker complained that she was harassing him, the shrapnel was still flying years later and causing deep injuries to others who had the misfortune to enter Sonya Egan’s orbit.
For instance, she set to work on a woman who was handling the social worker’s harassment complaint in her role as a lawyer.
Egan, who could give a masterclass in harassment, accused the lawyer of harassing her, complaining of persistent and sometimes aggressive phone calls by day and night, that the lawyer was calling to her home in person and getting others to call to intimidate her.
None of this was true. However, the allegations she was making were a carbon copy of her own behaviour in the cases where she was convicted and sentenced for harassment last year.
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A friend of the social worker did no more to merit the attentions of Egan than to be a friend of this man. He was one of the men against whom she made allegations in the form of 33 typed pages of lies which she brought to Mayfield Garda Station on Christmas week 2017.
She named various locations where she said that he raped and sexually assaulted her. She accused this man of bringing her to an address in Cork City with another lawyer and a third man bearing tribal tattoos. She said this man and the lawyer raped her, and the friend of the social worker recorded it.
She said the social worker introduced her to another man who sexually assaulted her at a Dublin hotel.
Egan said another woman, who is a social worker with whom she had contact, was accessing child abuse images and living with a man who had been charged with sexual offences against children.
Another lawyer she encountered in respect of issues in the case came under fire too, and she complained that he raped or sexually assaulted her 17 to 20 times. She accused a senior garda of sexually assaulting her and threatening to kill her.
The litany of lies went on and on.
Now that she has confessed to making up all of these stories, now that a consultant psychologist has reported that Sonya Egan is a pathological liar — possibly traumatised by abandonment issues — and now that we can see the cumulative effect of all of these lies, it is easy to say that it was all so preposterous that she could not be believed.
But for several years, when this tumult of vindictive and horrific lies were being churned out, they had to be seriously investigated.
Professional people, in some instances, had to stand down from their jobs to let investigations proceed, they had to be interviewed at length, and they had to go home to their loved ones and tell them in some cases that they had been accused of raping a woman.
As Judge Catherine Staines said: “One victim was accused of rape and sexual abuse. A letter of complaint was sent to his employer, to An Garda Síochána and to the minister for health.
"While formal investigations were taking place, he had to stand aside. His reputation was ruined. It effectively ended his whole career.
"Ms Egan contacted RTÉ and [no relevant programme was ever made] and she also used social media — she was allowed to use social media to disseminate lies about him.
“Another victim was accused of running a paedophile ring. He had given his life to child protection. She wrote to his employer, wrote to the police, and there were hours and hours of Garda interviews. She destroyed his career and caused huge emotional trauma.”
Another victim expressed the hope that Sonya Egan would never again be able to do this to another person — ruin people’s lives with lies told to the police, employers, Tusla, and online.
Those who were wrongly accused will hope for some peace and quiet.
For all the noise of vicious lies in this case, Courtroom 5 at the courthouse on Anglesea St in Cork was strangely muted for the sentencing hearing.
Sonya Egan refused to attend and stand in the dock to hear of the agony and damage she had caused to people who had the deep misfortune to become known to her.
She refused to appear by video link from prison. Instead she went on hunger strike in Limerick Prison — by no means the first time she had publicly declared that she was going to take her own life. Judge Staines effectively said she would not be manipulated by the arch manipulator.
The pains of the victims were also dealt with quietly — their victim impact statements going somewhat under the radar to be read in chambers by the judge and not in public.
But four of the victims were present — three of the men against whom atrocious things were alleged by Egan — and one woman, Laura O’Connell, who came to court to stand in solidarity with and support of the other victims.
Ms O’Connell is the community activist who, along with former Sinn Féin TD Jonathan O’Brien, was harassed by Egan, resulting in the two-year sentence already being served by Egan.
As the new sentence of four years was imposed this week, there was as much interest for the victims in what will happen when Egan walks out the prison gates.
She will have a further sentence of two years hanging over her, suspended on condition that she has no contact of any kind with her victims for a period of five years, that she complies with the directions of the Probation Service, and attends for psychotherapy to tackle — among other things — her pathological lying.
The victims who were present embraced each other as the court cleared.
It was easy to imagine that the absent victims would join in that collective embrace. They never asked to be brought together with the horrible distinction of being the ones who were targeted by Sonya Egan.
Nevertheless, they would surely all embrace each other heartily, for only they will ever truly know the depths of each other’s hurt.
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