Today the censorship rampant in the Irish media fell before the extraordinary courage of Ryan Casey – Ashling Murphy’s boyfriend and the man she planned to marry.
His powerful, poignant words after the settlement was announced were a reminder that this was always a case taken, and a victory won, not for Ryan himself or for any political cause, but for Ashling.
It was always a disgrace that a young man, grieving the brutal murder of woman he loved, was forced to take a defamation action to defend his good name after the BCC broadcast a claim that “elements” of his statement about Ashling’s murderer and the harmful changes to this country constituted “an incitement to hatred.”
Defamation is not an action taken lightly: it is hugely difficult and daunting and anxiety-inducing for an ordinary person to take on the might of an established and wealthy news agency and their phalanxes of legal advisers. For all that we cherish freedom of the press, the right of every decent person not to be defamed can be very difficult to establish when the fear of crippling legal bills can give very understandable pause to even the bravest and mostly wrongly defamed person.
And Ryan Casey was most wrongly, seriously, defamed. It is difficult to watch that BBC interview with Kitty Holland without being shocked anew at the statement that some of his words were “unhelpful” and amounted to “incitement to hatred”. (It was curious, wasn’t it, to observe today that most of the media today managed to report on the settlement while studiously avoiding almost any mention of the journalist involved or the issue at hand.)
As Ryan said today:
I took this legal action against the BBC not solely out of anger, but out of a need for accountability and dignity for Ashling, for myself, our families, and for all victims who deserve to have their voices heard without such harsh criticism or judgment.
We forget sometimes that those left behind after a vicious murder are victims too. And all those who sought to diminish Ryan Casey’s words, to make of them something ugly, something disrespectable or a cause of hatred – when they were, in fact, a resonating plea for honesty and re-evaluation – were, in my opinion, attacking not just the truth of his words but the weight of his grief.
Grief is not an emotion but an endurance: a many-layered sorrow that we all regrettably experience but never quite fully understand. It is, I think, all the more devastating for those who suffer the terrible, inexplicable, loss of someone deeply loved because of the violence and inhumanity of another. The sorrow must seem unending: the anguish and pain ever-sharp and unrelenting and unceasing.
That is a grief where the reeling mind and hammering heart of loss does not quieten with ordinary measures. Justice can comfort, but it cannot restore what has been so wantonly, cruelly, taken away. Most of us quietly thank God that we have never been forced to experience such trauma – the kind of horror that was heaped upon the family of Ashling Murphy and her boyfriend Ryan Casey.
I hope it is not intrusive to say that I briefly met Ashling’s mother, Kathleen, and her sister Amy, at a concert held by Comhaltas at the Fleadh Cheoil in Mullingar where a fittingly beautiful composition written by Tom Doorley for the National Folk Orchestra of Ireland was played in her honour. (Ashling, an exceptional traditional musician, was a member of same). It was entitled ‘Áilleacht Ashling’ – Ashling’s beauty – and it was a homage to her sparkling spirit and talent and kindness and the huge impact she had already made on the world.
Many in that packed audience were weeping. The standing ovation was for Ashling and for her family and Ryan and those who loved her: a desire to bring some solace, to share that this community in which she played such a warm and central part, could also not understand why this beloved, irreplaceable daughter had been taken from a lovely and loving family by such evil. To express a wish to try to ease their terrible, inconsolable, heartbreak. To say that we prayed that their hearts would somehow, in time, eventually mend.
I tried, perhaps clumsily, to offer condolences. Comhbhrón ó chroí. But any words would have seemed insufficient to offer to these beautiful women who now seemed carved out of sorrow. I prayed that they might be comforted by the assurance that Ashliong was most deeply loved on this earth, and embraced in heaven by those who loved her and had gone before her.
Yet that kind and decent family – Kathleen and Amy and her father Raymond and her brother Cathal and Ryan Casey – had to gather themselves day after day and endure the long and torturous weeks of the trial, listening to harrowing evidence as to how the young woman they loved was murdered. They had to face Jozef Puska and listen to the distressing details of how he so callously stabbed a young teacher who was just out for a run.
It was, Amy Murphy said: “our worst nightmare” that was “played over and over through each piece of footage, each witness, every statement…the descriptions of her wounds, her mouth, her legs, her face, her hair, her scarf, her fitbit and her last beating heartbeats. How could any human inflict such hate on innocence?”
Ryan Casey said of Puska that he “smirked, smiled and showed zero remorse” during the trial, a reaction he said “sums you up as the person you really are, the epitome of pure evil.”
And he had more to say too, about the man who had murdered the woman he had loved since they were young sweethearts. But the media did not like this part of Ryan Casey’s impact statement.
As John McGuirk wrote, they viewed his words as “a dagger aimed right at the heart of the story the Irish media has been telling the Irish people about immigration for years”. They did not like that Ashling Murphy’s grief-stricken boyfriend spelled out what so many ordinary, decent people were thinking.
It just sickens me to the core that someone can come to this country, be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years – over 10 years – never hold down a legitimate job and never once contribute to society in any way shape or form [and] can commit such a horrendous, evil act of incomprehensible violence on such a beautiful, loving and talented person who in fact, worked for the State, educating the next generation and represented everything that is good about Irish society.
I feel like this country is no longer the country that Ashling and I grew up in and has officially lost its innocence when a crime of this magnitude can be perpetrated in broad daylight.
This country needs to wake up; this time things have got to change.
We have to, once and for all, start putting the safety of not only Irish people but everybody in this country who works hard, pays taxes, raises families and overall contributes to society, first.
We don’t want to see any other family in this country go through what we have gone through and are continuing to go through.
I myself have a little sister and honestly, just the thought of her walking the streets of any village, town or city in this country alone makes me physically sick and quite frankly absolutely terrifies me as this country is simply not safe anymore.
This time, if real change does not happen, if the safety of people living in this country is further ignored, I’m afraid our country is heading down a very dangerous path and you can be certain that we will not be the last family to be in this position.
His words were prescient – but much of the media did not want that warning heard or heeded. There was, apparently, “an audible intake of breath in some parts of the courtroom” when Ryan Casey told the inconvenient truth – that the safety of people living in this country was being compromised by the failure to put our own citizens first.
It’s worth noting, given the claim that part of his statement was inciting people to hatred, that Ryan specifically said that he wanted to see the state prioritising “not only Irish people but everybody in this country who works hard, pays taxes, raises families and overall contributes to society, first.” Who, then, was he inciting hatred against?
Much of the Irish media excluded sections of his victim impact statement. After it was shared in full, and read by millions, on social media, and the truth of words recognised, his statement was attacked as ‘unhelpful’ and, perhaps unwittingly, inciting hatred. Ryan Casey, of course, was doing no such thing. He was challenging hatred, calling it to account, seeking to protect us from it, from the blind, savage hatred that had taken Ashling’s life.
Today, Ryan said that the settlement “marks the end of a long and difficult chapter of frustration and censorship” and that his legal action was about truth, fairness and decency. It is reprehensible that a grieving man in one of the most high-profile murder cases ever seen in this country had to take a legal case to have that established.
I took this legal action against the BBC not solely out of anger, but out of a need for accountability and dignity for Ashling, for myself, our families, and for all victims who deserve to have their voices heard without such harsh criticism or judgment.
I welcome the resolution of these legal proceedings and the acknowledgements made by the BBC in their statement in open court today.
I hope this serves as a reminder to all media organisations of the high level of responsibility that comes with running such public platforms.
This was never just about me, it was about truth, fairness, and decency.
To everyone who has supported me either in person, by post, text messages, phone calls, social media posts and comments over the last three and a half years I can now finally come forward and say from the bottom of my heart thanks to each and every one of you.
Don’t think for a second I didn’t see all your amazing support across all platforms, it was humbling to say the least.
I’d like to also thank my lawyers, Ronan, Gerard and Marianne for their fantastic guidance, support and professionalism throughout this entire legal proceeding.
I now move forward, finally free to use my voice again, to honour Ashling and to advocate for the changes we desperately require in this country, for the increased safety measures we so clearly need, and for a society that listens to its people, free of gaslighting, blacklisting or censorship.
We all have a lot more in common than what separates us.
Let’s honour Ashling by building a better and safer Ireland, we all know we can do so much better.”
It was always all for Ashling and for her family. To be free to grieve and to seek change “free of gaslighting, blacklisting or censorship”. To honour her memory without fear of condemnation. Because the truth is that if Jozef Puska had not been allowed to live as he did in this country for so long, she would still be alive. We can now only hope that Ashling’s beautiful life will continue to be a solace to her heartbroken loved ones.