Public “speculation” about a case of alleged image-based abuse of a University College Dublin medicine student was “harming” the UCD community, the college’s president Orla Feely has said.
In a lengthy statement to staff on Wednesday, as more than a thousand people protested at the Belfield campus about the university’s response to the case, Feely sent out a further update from the college.
“Because speculation in the public domain is now harming our students, staff and other members of our community, I am writing to provide some clarification on material now in circulation,” she said.
Wednesday’s protest was called by the UCD students’ union after a “nude, bruised” intimate image of the young woman after allegedly being sexually assaulted, was shared with staff and students, via email and WhatsApp groups, last year.
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The case was raised in recent weeks by Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger in the Dáil.
“Not in our UCD”, “we stand with her” and “shame” were chanted by those at Wednesday’s protest, with many of those present carrying placards bearing these and other statements.
In her statement Feely said it was “absolutely not the case” that the university knew the identity of any perpetrator or perpetrators or who had allegedly shared the images, despite speculation to the contrary.
“While there have been questions about why we are not progressing an internal investigation, we cannot do this in parallel with an ongoing Garda criminal investigation of this complexity, as this may prejudice any future criminal case and prevent justice ultimately being served,” said Feely.
“The gardaí have the forensic, technical and legal expertise to investigate and are the appropriate authority.”
The “abhorrent messages and obscene images” that were circulated “came from unidentified email accounts and unknown phone numbers”, she said.
She added that it was “important to be absolutely clear that we have no evidence to suggest that these were further circulated by staff or students of the university other than in support of the response and the Garda investigation”.
Until now, she said, to protect parties’ privacy and to comply with a High Court order that imposed restrictions on identifying the woman and the university in a case she brought against the university, UCD had taken “extreme care when commenting on this”.
“Yesterday afternoon, the judge varied the court order to permit the identification of the university,” she said, adding that it was “very important that the anonymity of the student continues to be protected”.
In her judgment on a case taken last year by the young woman against UCD, Judge Marguerite Bolger ordered that neither the student, witnesses, nor UCD be identifiable.
The judgment was published on February 3rd.
“This judgment cannot be published on courts.ie, the world wide web or any public media other than in its current anonymised form or in a manner that might directly or indirectly identify any of the anonymised persons or entities,” the judge ordered.
On Tuesday UCD successfully applied to have this order varied to allow the university to be identified.
The student lost the case, in which she took issue with how UCD had required her to take steps to pass modules she had difficulty completing in the aftermath of an alleged rape.
Describing the alleged image-based abuse suffered by the woman as “extremely distressing and complex”, Feely said: “The needs of our student have been at the centre of the university’s response throughout.
“We care deeply about the trauma and anguish that she has experienced. We are also concerned about the distress caused to our wider community of students and staff, particularly in the School of Medicine.”
