Gemma O’Doherty Issues Harassment Claim Against Edel Campbell
A litany of malicious falsehoods have been made on oath by Campbell and her IRA/MI5 solicitor Ciaran Mulholland. Both are involved in a criminal fund which the corrupt courts wilfully ignore
For two years, I’ve been harassed and defamed by IRA/MI5 solicitor Ciaran Mulholland from West Belfast who should have been struck off the Law Society roll a long time ago. His legal record is shameful. He’s nothing more than a tool of the Crown’s freemasonic regime who have used shady individuals like him for decades to subvert Irish society.
His malicious and spurious case against me is designed to try to silence me from speaking and writing about the drug-related death of Diego Gilsenan (18) who died in Cavan in 2021 after a night out with the son of a senior garda. It is a cover-up of epic proportions.
Mulholland is using the young man’s mother Edel Campbell to harass me. She has made the most outrageous comments about me in the media because she has questions to answer about her son’s death and knows a lot more about it than she is letting on. We are reminded of the priest’s sermon at the funeral of Gilsenan where he spoke about the scourge of drug dealing in the small town of Kingscourt, Cavan. When they discovered this critical fact had been made public, they promptly moved to have it removed, revealing their key role in this cover-up.
This dubious pair are being used by the regime to spread falsehoods on the media and in the courts about my work on this case. They are both actively trying to shut down my investigation into drug dealing in Cavan. And as part of their scheme, they have been ordered to promote a new law that would prevent journalists from investigating suspicious deaths which are troublesome to the regime.
Corrupt High Court judge Mark Sanfey is up to his neck in it with them having organised my kidnapping and false imprisonment earlier this year as I was making my way into court to attend Aaron Brady’s appeal. We recently discovered his motivations in doing this. He is the legal representative of bankrupt Celtic Tiger cowboys Ray and Danny Grehan of Kilkerrin, Glenamaddy, Co. Galway - brothers of the notorious Brendan Grehan SC (below) who choreographed the despicable framing of Aaron.
I have recently issued a civil counter claim against Campbell for harassment and this is now on the record of the court. You can read it below.
Gemma O’Doherty ( known as the defendant for these purposes) has been an investigative journalist for almost 30 years. She has won multiple awards for her work and was Chief Features Writer at the Irish Independent where she worked for almost two decades. Her journalism has led to the reopening of several murders, the establishment of State enquiries and the jailing of elite child abusers. She has a large audience both at home in Ireland and internationally with approximately 30,000 visitors to her website daily and a total of almost 45 million visitors.
The plaintiff Edel Campbell is a ‘healthcare’ worker from a family well-known to the Gardai for heroin dealing, theft, burglary and violent assault. Her son Diego Gilsenan, whose death is the subject of the defendant’s investigation, was also involved in the illegal drug trade and it is widely claimed that his death was brought about as a result of drugs and drug dealing, as referred to at his funeral by the priest in front of the congregation and local people in his town. This is a matter of enormous public interest. The defendant has every right in law to investigate it and inform her large audience about the circumstances of his death.
The plaintiff Edel Campbell has engaged in a reckless and intentional campaign of perjury, harassment, defamation, terror, extortion, legal abuse and malicious falsehood against the defendant for two years causing her extreme distress. By her acts, she has seriously interfered with the defendant’s right to peace and privacy with the intention of causing harm to her and breaching her right to carry out her lawful and public interest reporting as an investigative journalist of many years.
The plaintiff’s campaign of harassment against the defendant began when she lawfully and ethically published a thumbnail picture of Diego Gilsenan, Ms Campbell’s adult son who died in suspicious circumstances. She did not identify him by name. The picture was already previously and widely published in the mainstream media without any restrictions. Mr Gilsenan’s death was the subject of an inquest, details of which must be made available to the public in law.
The plaintiff claimed that the details of Mr Gilsenan’s death are private and confidential, which is a grave falsehood given that his death was the subject of a public inquest - a public event in law funded by the public and all details of which ‘shall’ in law be made available to the public.
Out of good will and charity, the defendant removed the picture of Diego Gilsenan permanently from her website even though she was under NO obligation to do so, This did not satisfy the plaintiff and she continued her tirade of harassment against the defendant. Such behaviour indicates the plaintiff is driven by malice in her egregious actions against the defendant, and the removal of her son’s picture - which was lawfully and ethically used by the defendant - was never her objective.
The plaintiff went on national radio and accused the defendant of harassment for engaging in public interest journalism by informing the public about the suspicious death of Diego Gilsenan. This does not equate to harassment under any circumstances in any jurisdiction in the world including Ireland.
The plaintiff contacted the gardai 50 times about the defendant because she published a perfectly lawful image of Diego Gilsenan, the subject of a suspicious death. The gardai told her that the defendant’s actions do not represent harassment. The plaintiff’s actions however do constitute harassment and represent a targeted course of malicious behaviour by her towards the defendant. They also represent an outrageous waste of Garda time and resources.
The plaintiff embarked on a litany of public attacks on the defendant grossly defaming her on national radio by claiming she ‘hated’ her and had ‘ripped the heart clean from her’. These remarks represent harassment and are gravely defamatory of the defendant who was engaged in an investigation into drug deaths of young people in Cavan and drug-dealers who may be known to the dead man. The defendant sought to address these claims and to rightly rectify the scandalous damage done to her good name by the plaintiff. In her actions, the plaintiff showed contempt for the court and a disgraceful breach of proper and fair procedure in regards to the defendant’s right to a fair trial.
The plaintiff obtained the defendant’s private telephone number and began contacting her late at night. She began following her on Twitter and sending her messages in the middle of the night. These actions constitute harassment. The defendant, who has never made any contact with the plaintiff whatsoever, was forced to block her online.
The plaintiff has also sought to gain financially from her media harassment campaign against the defendant by taking unlawful proceedings against her which are supported by an illegal third-party fund set up with her and her lawyers by a political activist Kristopher Shekleton who defamed the defendant by calling her an ‘evil monster’ and ‘the most hated woman in Ireland.’ This fund is in direct breach of the law on maintenance and champerty and is a criminal offence and civil tort. The statements made about the defendant in the fund are grossly injurious to the defendant’s good name and represent contempt of court.
The plaintiff has made numerous statements about the defendant which are false and represent perjury. She stated that the defendant said Diego Gilsenan had died as a result of the Covid vaccine. This is untrue. The defendant at no time stated that and clearly said that she did not know how he died but there was an onus on government and media to establish why so many young people are dying. This form of journalism is protected in law and convention in Ireland and Europe. It was done out of compassion and concern for the very many young victims of sudden and suspicious death in Ireland we have seen in recent years.
These proceedings, which have no standing in law, are currently the subject of a Garda investigation and have been referred to The Law Society of Ireland, The Bar Council of Ireland, The Judicial Council and The Legal Services Regulatory Authority. They have also been referred to several international legal and press authorities and organisations.
Following the defamatory, malicious and bizarre claims made by the plaintiff about the defendant on the national airwaves, in breach of her right to a fair trial and her good name, the defendant sought to establish more information about the suspicious death of Diego Gilsenan believing the plaintiff’s behaviour to be sinister in the extreme. The plaintiff then sought to have the defendant jailed.
The plaintiff is in breach of the law by impeding the defendant in her work investigating drug-dealing among young people in Cavan and is in the public interest.
The death of the plaintiff’s son was the subject of an inquest which left many questions unresolved, including interference with and the repositioning of Diego Gilsenan’s body by the plaintiff Edel Campbell prior to her contacting the Gardai on the day of his suspicious death in August 2021 at their home. Ms Campbell claimed she knew her son was dead but instead of contacting the Gardai, she set about moving his body. These actions indicate that she interfered with a potential crime scene. The plaintiff’s testimony at the inquest was contradictory and absurd. She claimed on national media that her adult son was the happiest person in the world in the hours but this is clearly untrue and there are many claims that he was carrying a drug debt that he was unable to pay.
The plaintiff has questions to answer about her son’s death and why the priest at his funeral spoke about the scourge of drug-dealing. It is widely claimed in Kingscourt that Diego Gilsenan was involved in drugs and drug dealing. He was a very troubled individual and not the happiest person in the world as the plaintiff suggests. He was in extreme distress in the hours before his death and the plaintiff was fully aware of this. She is being dishonest when she claims his alleged suicide came out of the blue. Mr Gilsenan’s medical records, which form part of the public inquest, were altered without explanation including the cause of death on the Post Mortem report which was changed in such a way as not to rule out homicide. The Coroner’s Act commands that such information ‘shall’ be made available to the public and that is the vital function of a journalist which cannot be impeded by any judge or family member without a change in public policy. The plaintiff’s actions against the defendant represent an attack on press freedom. She has engaged in a campaign of harassment to try to impede the defendant in her vital public interest journalism.
The defendant received the inquest file from Cavan Coroner, Dr Mary Flanagan in May 2023 following unlawful threats, harassment and slander against her on national media by the plaintiff. She observed a number of anomalies in statements from key witnesses. Some were missing and unsigned. The inquest file did not include the testimony of key witnesses, including those who had taken the Plaintiff’s son down from the ‘wooden thing’ where he had been found. Ms Campbell has yet to explain what this ‘wooden thing’ is. The publicly funded inquest did not clarify this matter.
The plaintiff’s statement was contradictory and suspicious in places. It was at variance with the testimony given by Diego’s friend, Owen McArdle, the son of a senior guard who had been with him in the hours before he died. In the post mortem, which was incomplete, the word ‘hanging’ had been crossed out and replaced with ‘asphyxia due to ligature’. The change was unsigned and not dated. There were no photographs or descriptions of the shed or ‘wooden thing’ which the Plaintiff said her son had been found hanging from. The inquest file raised more questions than answers.
The defendant acquired the inquest file to have a fuller picture of the case, and in doing so, proved that there were many questions about the death that needed to be answered. This included the fact that the Plaintiff had said in an RTÉ interview that she had hung up on her son Diego during their last phone call. She did not mention this in her inquest statement.
A key witness who failed to give evidence in the case was Regina McArdle, a senior Garda, and the mother of Owen McArdle, who was with Diego Gilsenan in the immediate period before his death. For some unexplained reason, Mr McArdle did not have to attend the inquest, and his statement, which is unsigned, was taken in absentia. The public need to know why this is the case and to be informed about all of the other inadequacies pertaining to the inquest. Ms Campbell’s explanation about moving her son’s lifeless body from a ‘thing’ in the garden shed before emergency services and Gardai arrived, and what happened in the hours before she allegedly found his remains, are contradictory and bizarre and warrant full journalistic scrutiny.
The inquest shows that Ms Campbell has provided inconsistent evidence in her scant and contradictory testimony and this must be scrutinised and cannot be impeded by any judge. Everything the defendant has exposed about the failings of the inquest are perfectly within her remit to do so as a journalist - with full protection in law under the Irish Coroner’s Act and many European and international conventions on Freedom of the Press.
The plaintiff alleges that the defendant was in Kingscourt in May 2023. This amounts to perjury. The defendant was not in Kingscourt at that time and has never been there in relation to this case even though she would be perfectly within her rights to do so. Ms Campbell also alleges that an ‘ultra right mob’ was with her. This statement represents perjury and is highly defamatory of the Defendant.
The plaintiff alleges that the defendant ‘stole’ the picture of her son from RIP.ie. This amounts to perjury and is untrue and defamatory of the defendant. The photograph which she published was already widely available online and carried no restrictions. Since these allegations against the defendant were made by the plaintiff, many more pictures of her son have been published online by the mainstream media but the plaintiff does not appear to be aggrieved nor is she claiming ‘harassment’ or seeking to have them removed. Her only target is the defendant whose intention at all times was to seek to establish how Diego Gilsenan died, which she is perfectly entitled to do as a journalist without any interference by a judge. The plaintiff’s actions are malicious and further proof that she is engaged in a campaign of harassment and persecution of the defendant.
The legal definition of harassment is a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct, targeted at another person, which is calculated to cause that person alarm, fear or distress. Harassment must be intended to cause a negative psychological impact. The plaintiff has engaged in a deliberate course of conduct to target the defendant and harass her. Through her actions, she set about attempting to destroy the defendant’s good name, to persecute her and attempt to terrorise her by threatening her with imprisonment for carrying out legitimate journalism. Many very serious questions remain about the death of Diego Gilsenan, which every journalist has the right to investigate and must not be impeded by Ms Campbell or her legal agent, who has connections to the terrorist outfit known as the IRA.
The plaintiff has stated that her objective in taking this action against the defendant is to bring about legislative change which would thwart journalistic inquiries into sudden deaths in Ireland and remove inquest files from public scrutiny. In this regard, the Plaintiff is threatening press freedom - a cornerstone of democracy and the right of the Irish people to know the facts about suspicious deaths. This attack on public interest journalism is a matter of serious public concern and will be vehemently resisted by the Defendant at home and abroad. Inquests are publicly funded and held on behalf of the public to ensure suspicious deaths are property investigated by the State. Diego Gilsenan’s death has not been property investigated and is clearly the subject of a cover-up. The plaintiff’s account of his death raises many questions which the public have a right to be answered.
The plaintiff is engaged in a malicious, vexatious and perjurious campaign of harassment of the defendant. She has been given free run of the national airwaves to make highly defamatory claims against the defendant which are untrue and a flagrant abuse of court rules. The defendant has done everything possible to defend her good name from these outlandish and bizarre attacks and will continue to do so while protecting the media’s long-standing right to investigate suspicious deaths.
The plaintiff’s lawyer Ciaran Mulholland has also stated that he wants to use the case to change the law in Ireland to stop journalists examining suspicious deaths. This represents a sinister attack on free speech and freedom of the press and is unconstitutional and a breach of the Coroner’s Act. Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights specifically protects journalists in carrying out their work and places a positive obligation on the State to uphold their right to freedom of expression.
The plaintiff and her legal advisors have engaged in a malicious, egregious and vindictive campaign of harassment and defamation in advance of a trial thereby prejudicing the hearing and attempting to create a bias against the defendant in advance of it. Diego Gilsenan was an adult at the time of his death. The plaintiff has no authority to dictate who can and cannot investigate her son’s death, especially since there are allegations of drug-dealing surrounding it which may be a threat to the lives of young people living in the community of Kingscourt and the wider Cavan region.
The defendant has a long track record investigating deaths that have not been properly examined by the State and supporting families in their search for justice. She has a large international following and has been the most retweeted journalist in Ireland. She is a journalist of impeccable standards and could not envisage harassing any other person not least because this would go against her strongly held Catholic convictions.
The plaintiff’s actions represent a clear example of harassment, which is defined as a persistent and deliberate course of unreasonable and oppressive conduct targeted at the defendant. The plaintiff’s malicious commentary about the defendant on the national airwaves was calculated to cause alarm and distress to her and intended to cause a negative impact on her as well as breaching her right to a fair trial and due process.
The plaintiff’s actions in her campaign of harassment against the defendant represent a gross violation of her private and family life and her right to carry out her profession as an investigative journalist. The plaintiff has no right in law to prevent any person from publishing information from an inquest report and scrutinising it. It is the case that the plaintiff has many questions to answer about her son’s death and has made misleading statements regarding same. She has committed perjury, fraud, deception and in her campaign of harassment against the defendant is threatening press freedom and free speech in Ireland representing a grotesque and sinister attack on democracy and the Constitution of Ireland.
And the defendant claims:
Damages for harassment and perjury to include aggravated and punitive damages for these injuries and the following.
Damages for trespass to the person, negligent and wilful infliction of emotional distress, breach of Constitutional rights and attempt to impede lawful journalism investigating drug-dealing by the plaintiff’s son.
Damages for false arrest and imprisonment.
Damages for malicious, reckless, and negligent misrepresentation.
Damages for deceit and fraudulent misrepresentation
Damages for unlawful means conspiracy, and extortion.
Damages for public humiliation, ridicule, and shaming.
Damages for invasion of privacy and interference in family life.
An injunction permanently restraining and prohibiting the plaintiff from engaging in harassment of the defendant and maliciously defaming her.
An order that the plaintiff cease all contact with the defendant whether by telephone communication, social media or otherwise and an explanation as to how she acquired the defendant’s private telephone number.
An order upholding the law on champerty and maintenance, inquests, and the right of journalists to investigate suspicious deaths that are the subject of inquests.
Such further order as the Court doth deem fit.
Costs
Signed
Gemma O’Doherty
Gemma, stand your ground - true justice must be had - and not this diabolical and so malicious farce calculated to ‘shut you down’. You’re a great warrior for human justice and against abuse of human rights, not least your own rights to lawfully defend yourself in a Republic that is beginning to resemble that yellow-skinned fruit, the Banana! You’re a force for good in this world and an example to so many others who are fighting back against being wrongfully maligned across the spectrum in public life no matter where that might be on this planet!
You could'nt make this stuff up. Just horrifying. Keep up the great work Gemma and stay safe