Jackie shows how ordinary people can effect change

I’M LOOKING forward to Jackie And Coco tomorrow night, the RTÉ documentary about the indefatigable Jackie Fox and her campaign to have a law against cyberbullying and posting intimate images online put on the statute book after her daughter’s suicide in 2018. Before the tragedy, Jackie, below, a mother of three from Tallaght, Dublin, was an unremarkable woman and there was nothing to suggest the extraordinary personal qualities that helped her make history as the driving force behind Coco’s Law.

There have been other examples. There was Sara Payne in the UK, of course, whose eight-year-old daughter was murdered by a paedophile and who spearheaded the campaign for Sarah’s Law, giving parents the power to find out if anyone who has contact with their child has a record of child sexual offences. And indeed there were countless Irish mothers who championed their children’s right to an education at a time when little was known about special needs. Like them, for Jackie the combined effect of tragedy, loss and her love for her child has revealed a strength of character she might never have known she possessed.

Jackie has protested outside the Dáil, hounded politicians and spoke both in Leinster House and the European Parliament about Coco’s law. She navigated a public world that in many ways was designed to intimidate people like her and keep them out.

Tomorrow’s documentary shows us that while politicians hold the power to change the world, it’s so-called ordinary people who are often the catalysts for that change.