Probe into false claims of migrant child abuse
Gardai say online allegation resulted in protest crowd
GARDAI are investigating after false claims online that a child was sexually abused by migrants at an accommodation centre.
Eastern Division Assistant Commissioner Paul Cleary said officers have “serious concerns” about the spread of misinformation that led to arson attacks and other incidents across the country.
Yesterday Mr Cleary told the Policing Authority that a large crowd protested at an accommodation centre.
He said: “We had reports circulating online about allegations of an assault on a child allegedly by males staying in one of these centres.
“Completely untrue and it resulted in a fairly large protest at that particular centre with people taking a certain view due to the misinformation circulating online.”
Mr Cleary said gardai now have opened investigations into those false claims.
He continued: “We are liaising with social media platforms.”
Mr Cleary said the misinformation had led to arson.
He added: “I have serious concerns about what’s happening online for the Eastern Region.
“We’ve had a couple of examples in the last few weeks where we saw for example some posts online suggesting that a particular property was to be used as an accommodation centre – and it was subsequently the subject of arson.
“And there was no such thing. It wasn’t the case that it was to be used.”
Meanwhile following a question from Policing Authority member Dr Elaine Byrne on whether there is a national organised effort in connection with these arson attacks, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said officers have not found evidence of one.
He continued: “Obviously that’s been constantly commented upon and it’s the job of the Special Detective Unit to find those links if they exist.
“And so we’ve an open mind. We’ve all the evidence and we’re informed by the intelligence picture.
“But at this moment in time we’ve not seen this in effect overall conspiracy. A conspiracy has to be something more than four or five fire emojis on an X post.
“So there’s lots of posts which are very concerning in terms of their content that don’t breach the criminal threshold in terms of just what is said.
“But what we want to be sure of is, is there a criminal conspiracy and can we find it from the information that we know.”