At 11.50am on Wednesday last, a well known activist on the right flank of the anti-immigration protest movement tweeted a statement to his 16,100 followers on X dot com, formerly known as twitter. That statement claimed, in some detail, that a young migrant girl of seven years of age had been “allegedly raped by three Roma men on the grounds” of a hotel in Celbridge on the previous evening.
It further alleged that the state and the Gardaí were engaged in a cover-up, and that the child in question had been taken to hospital in an taxi, rather than an ambulance, so as “to not bring any attention?”, with the question mark presumably indicating that this was speculation.
It went on to say that “the police, MSM, & monsters in this Government will not want this story getting out – they actively cover them up & have been doing so for months now”. The tweet finished by calling concerned parents out to a peaceful assembly at 6.30pm on Wednesday evening.
That was at 11.50am on Wednesday. One hour and twenty minutes later, at twelve minutes past one, this reporter reached out to the Garda Press Office. I noted the claim by the activist, and the fact that it had been seen – at that stage – by 8,000 people. My email said that “I wanted to seek guidance from AGS as to whether there is even a smidgen of truth to (the claim)” and asked directly if the Gardaí had any record of a sexual assault on a child in the Celbridge area over the past two weeks.
At 10.43am on Thursday morning, 22 hours later, I had still not received a reply. By this time, the tweet had ballooned from 8,000 views to over 100,000. At this stage I followed up, seeking comment, and was told that a statement would issue in a few hours.
When Gardaí finally responded, at nine minutes past 1pm yesterday, the views had increased to over 120,000. It had taken 24 hours to get an answer.
That answer, as it happens, is pretty clear: The claims made by the activist – and in fairness, many others – are false. No child was raped in Celbridge, and certainly not by three Roma men. A young child, the Gardaí say, was allegedly assaulted by a person known to the child, and this is what Gardaí are investigating. While there is no doubt that this is an allegation of a very serious crime, Gript understands that there is no sexual element to the incident.
Taking a full day to respond to a media query is, of course, not irregular Garda practice, and this writer is not arguing that it is possible or reasonable to expect official statements to be issued within minutes of every event taking place. Facts need to be gathered, statements crafted, and the Garda Press Office certainly cannot afford to issue inaccurate statements. It should also be noted that it is reasonable to expect that in a case involving a child, a specialist interviewer may have been required to help establish the facts.
That said, there is a clear difference between taking one’s time to get it right, and waiting fully 24 hours to issue a statement when wild rumours are circulating online. The latter strategy undermines trust, enhances suspicion, and gives credence to claims of a cover-up.
The Government and the media talks a lot, these days, about misinformation. In this case, they clearly have a point: The tweets that circulated claiming the effective gang-rape of a child were false. Presumably they originated with a deliberate lie, with somebody somewhere saying something that they knew to be untrue, or perhaps more likely simply inventing the most inflammatory thing they could think of, and saying that to somebody else.
The persons responsible for spreading that misinformation were clearly and unambiguously in the wrong. At the time of writing, more than two days later, the original tweet claiming a gang rape is still up, and still being viewed. As, in fairness to the author of it, are a great many others making the same claim. There is no excuse for that.
But at the same time, the state and its agencies cannot moan about misinformation and then consistently operate in a way that fertilizes the ground for misinformation. In this case, this reporter can state as fact that Gardaí were made aware of grave claims about a sexual attack on a child, and took 24 hours to respond with accurate information. In those 24 hours, those false claims grew at an enormous rate. It strains credibility to believe that the Gardai really needed fully 24 hours to make clear that they were not investigating a sexual assault.
Simply complaining about the authors of misinformation is hardly enough. Yes, in this case, those authors deserve round criticism. At the same time, we now live in an environment where information moves faster than it has at any time in human history. Responding quickly with accurate information is a necessity, because sometimes the wrong information can be published even by those acting in good faith.
In this case, evidently, the vast majority of the blame needs to go to those who recklessly claimed – and have not deleted the claims – that something happened which did not. At the same time, the state does itself no favours here, which is something that is not acknowledged as often as it should be.