Just over two weeks ago, on September 29th, Gript Media, and other outlets, identified Barbie Kardashian, born Alejandro Gentile, as the woman referred to in media reports as “Ireland’s homicidal girl”.
We revealed that Ms. Kardashian, a biological male who has had no gender reassignment, and whose gender dysphoria is disputed by experts in the UK and Ireland, was to be housed in Limerick woman’s prison, with vulnerable women, at her own request.
We further reported on court documents that reveal Ms. Kardashian’s troubling history of violence directed against women, her persistently expressed desire to rape and kill women, and the warning issued nationwide by Gardai about the danger posed by Kardashian to innocent members of the public.
We were not the only outlet to name Ms. Kardashian. The Irish Independent identified Ms Kardashian on September 26th. The Limerick Leader did the same on September 30th. The Burkean Journal reported the story within days, also.
In recent days, Ms. Kardashian’s name has started to disappear from the Irish internet. Not the internet at large – the Irish internet. A person in the UK, or the USA, can still access youtube videos about Ms. Kardashian’s story, but they have been blocked for Irish viewers.
The Burkean Journal story has disappeared.
Today, October 12th, Gript Media was the latest outlet to receive a threatening letter from Tusla, the child and family agency, demanding that we remove all coverage of Ms. Kardashian’s story, on the grounds that publication of the story breaches an order of the high court issued in July 2020.
We shall not be complying, for several reasons.
First, and most importantly, this is a story that is clearly and unambiguously in the public interest. Because of legislation passed by Irish politicians, a biological man who desires to rape and mutilate women has been housed in a prison with vulnerable women. The state obviously wishes to keep this fact secret, but that desire alone is no reason for the facts to remain hidden.
Second, reporting restrictions exist for a reason – to protect the right to a fair trial; to protect the identities of victims of crime; or to protect the identity of a child.
But Ms. Kardashian is not a child. And she is not facing a jury trial. Nor does her identification place any victim of a crime at risk of identification.
Third, we do not consider that the court order is applicable, although Tusla asserts that it is. All of the information published by Gript media was readily available to the public at a click of a button by accessing the website of the Courts Service itself. The court published all of the information about Ms. Kardashian in 2019.
It is patently absurd to suggest, as Tusla does, that it is criminal for one citizen to draw the attention of other citizens to information published by an arm of the citizen’s own Government. The state works for the citizen – not the other way around. If the state publishes information, of its own volition, the public has a right to hear about it.
In the days after the Kardashian story broke, some members of the Gardai were so concerned about the danger this individual poses to the public that they leaked photographs of her, and urged that they be published. Gript was one of two outlets to do so. We would do it again.
We are now faced with the threat of civil, and criminal prosecution, by an arm of the state, for revealing information that is in the public interest, on grounds that are largely spurious.
We will defend our right to provide information to the public that some in authority would rather keep hidden. What else, after all, is a media outlet for?
It is our contention, and belief, that Tusla’s desire to hide the Barbie Kardashian story from public view has little to nothing to do with child protection, which is their remit. Barbie Kardashian, after all, is an adult – and was an adult at all times when her story was covered by Gript.
In their letter to us, they provided no rationale to support their assertion that there is a public interest in keeping the story secret.
No. This appears – to our eyes – to be much more about an arm of the state, faced with defending an action that most citizens would find disturbing and absurd – placing a biological male who wants to rape women in a prison with women – deciding to abuse the legal process to hide the facts of an embarrassing story from the public.
Gript Media will fight this intrusion on the rights of the press, and the public, with everything we have.
Should the Barbie Kardashian story disappear from our pages, some day, then you, the public, will know that the state has won, and has succeeded in keeping secret a most disturbing series of events.
But until that day comes – if it comes – Gript will continue to defend the right of the public to know things that those in authority would rather keep hidden.
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