{"id":107071,"date":"2025-10-07T17:37:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:37:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/107071\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T17:37:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T17:37:08","slug":"paddy-jacksons-father-crushed-by-false-claim-he-tried-to-pay-off-rape-trial-complainant-court-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/107071\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy Jackson\u2019s father \u2018crushed\u2019 by false claim he tried to pay off rape trial complainant, court hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The father of rugby player Paddy Jackson has been left \u201ccrushed\u201d by an Irish reality TV personality falsely claiming he tried to pay off the complainant at the rugby star\u2019s rape trial, the High Court in Belfast<\/a> heard on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Peter Jackson became so obsessed and paranoid about the lies spread on social media by Danielle Meagher that he suffered a stroke while trawling the internet to check on her latest postings, a judge was told.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was an absolute statement that I had been criminally dishonest,\u201d Mr Jackson said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the intent of the tweets was to get into my brain and into my heart that was achieved by the individual who put them out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Jackson sued Ms Meagher, also known as Danielle Collins, for libel over the unfounded allegations published on Twitter, now rebranded as X, back in April 2018.<\/p>\n

Weeks earlier the former Ireland and Ulster rugby players Paddy Jackson (33) and Stuart Olding (32) had been unanimously acquitted of raping the same woman.<\/p>\n

Both sportsmen denied any criminal wrongdoing throughout their high-profile trial in Belfast.<\/p>\n

With judgment already obtained against Ms Meagher in the defamation action, she did not attend Tuesday\u2019s hearing on the level of damages to be awarded.<\/p>\n

Accompanied by his wife Gay, Mr Jackson described how their lives have been \u201cdecimated\u201d since the untrue claims were published about him bribing a witness and attempting to bribe the complainant at his son\u2019s trial.<\/p>\n

He told the court his shock and anger led to him losing self-confidence and so socially withdrawn in the intervening seven years that he became almost a recluse.<\/p>\n

The court heard Ms Meagher later denied knowing anything about the tweets, making baseless claims that the account was operated by a talent agency.<\/p>\n

The retired sales manager said one of his \u201cdeepest desires\u201d would have been to meet Ms Meagher face to face for an explanation and apology.<\/p>\n

Instead, however, he trawls social media platforms on a daily basis to discover if anything else has been posted.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mobile phone is never off, it\u2019s like a fixation or an obsession,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

His wife described the shock of her husband suffering a stroke in August this year while he was in bed checking on the defendant.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis lady, I can\u2019t bear to say her name, had been at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, we were trying to see reviews, and the stroke happened then,\u201d she told the court.<\/p>\n

Asked about the impact on her husband in the years since their son\u2019s trial, Mrs Jackson added: \u201cHis whole confidence and self-esteem has been ripped from him because of what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their lawyers argued that Mr Jackson has now spent more than seven years waiting to have his reputation completely vindicated through an award of damages.<\/p>\n

Reserving judgment on level of compensation, Mr Justice Master Harvey pledged to give his decision as soon as possible. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The father of rugby player Paddy Jackson has been left \u201ccrushed\u201d by an Irish reality TV personality falsely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[663,9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-107071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-belfast","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}