Ryan Casey, the boyfriend of teacher Ashling Murphy who was murdered in Tullamore in 2022, has filed a defamation action in the High Court against the BBC.
The action is understood to be in relation to criticisms that were made of Mr Casey’s victim impact statement, the Independent reports.
In Mr Casey’s statement to the court he said that the relationship between the young couple was “filled with nothing but so much love, happiness, joy, adventure, trust and most importantly respect”.
He said that he and Ms Murphy, a well-known and highly-regarded traditional musician, had planned to marry and discussed “how many kids we’d love to have and how they’d all be mighty little hurlers or camogie players and even better musicians”.
“Everything that I ever wanted in life, every single plan that I had in life is now gone and cannot be brought back. Ashling was simply everything to me, and this is what I’ve lost, I’ve simply lost everything, Ashling was just everything. The pain of losing someone who is so important to you is indescribable,” he said.
He also addressed Ashling Murphy’s killer, Jozef Puska who had come to live in Ireland from Slovakia, and who was found guilty of stabbing Ms Murphy 11 times as she was running along the Grand Canal outside Tullamore.
Mr Casey described Puska as “an evil, evil description of a human being” and added: “when your day of reckoning comes, may you be in hell a whole half hour, before God even knows you’re dead.”
He also said: “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,” he added.
“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,” Mr Casey said.
Those aspects of Mr Casey’s statement were raised on BBC Northern Ireland’s programme The View last November, and Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland was queried as to why some of the media and politicians had chosen to “ignore” what was “potentially the most significant part” of his full victim statement.
A BBC spokesperson said: “As this is a live legal matter, we have no comment to make.”