Contempt of court proceedings have begun in the Central Criminal Court against three newspapers and a TV station arising out of the recent case of a Dublin man jailed for 15 years on rape and torture charges in relation to his daughter and wife.
Mr Justice Quirke has directed the editors of the Evening Herald, Irish Independent and The Irish Times, along with the director of programming of TV3, to appear before him today to explain how material they published did not breach the court's order on preserving the victims' anonymity.
Mr Bruce Antoniotti SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said he wanted to make it clear that there was no complaint about the initial report of the court proceedings last Friday, but only about the material published this week. Mr Justice Quirke said he fully accepted that point as, in his experience, the court reporting was always very responsible.
He said there appeared to him to have been a "clear disregard of the order" this week by the publications referred to, and this had caused great hurt and distress to the victims.
Mr Justice Quirke said that, from the evidence he had heard, material published in the Evening Herald on July 10th and 12th, and by the Irish Independent, The Irish Times and TV3 on July 11th, appeared to amount to a "prima-facie breach of the order made under the legislation".
Sgt Joseph Martin said that the teenage girl in the case had twice tried to overdose in recent days as a result of the continuous media publicity. He said she was going around wearing a baseball cap, keeping her hand over her face, as she felt the whole world was looking at her as the victim in the case.
Sgt Martin said that photographs of the former family home had appeared in the Evening Herald and Irish Independent as well as on TV3. Photographs of the defendant with his eyes blacked out had also been published by the newspapers. The information, taken all together, could lead to the identification of the victims.
Mr Justice Finnegan, who jailed the 38-year-old man last Friday on 10 sample charges of rape, false imprisonment and assault causing harm to his daughter and wife, made an order then that nothing should be published which would lead people to identify the victims.
The jailed man's wife told Mr Antoniotti that she became very distressed on Tuesday when TV3 showed a picture of her former home, where the offences occurred. The station referred to her husband's brutality against her and her daughter and claimed it was the worst case ever.
Ms Siobhan Cahill, a social worker with the North-Eastern Health Board, referred to the Irish Times article of July 11th, in which the name of a hostel where the teenage victim was housed had been published. That, combined with information published in the other newspapers, would identify the victim. Ms Cahill said that all the articles had been a source of distress to both mother and daughter as well as to the other children in the family.
Mr Antoniotti submitted that while the Rape Act did not deal with the issue of contempt, the court had an overriding jurisdiction to see to it that its orders were obeyed. He believed that the photograph of the defendant with his eyes blacked out should not have been published.
Mr Justice Quirke said that the matter was extremely serious, as there seemed to him to have been a serious breach of Mr Justice Finnegan's order.