{"id":501095,"date":"2026-05-25T00:15:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/501095\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T00:15:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T00:15:15","slug":"proper-inquiry-could-have-stopped-ex-garda-paul-moodys-abuse-head-of-fiosru-says-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/501095\/","title":{"rendered":"Proper inquiry could have stopped ex-garda Paul Moody\u2019s abuse, head of Fiosr\u00fa says \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fiosr\u00fa<\/a>, which investigates complaints made against garda\u00ed<\/a>, conducted itself in an \u201cunacceptable\u201d manner when the first complaint was made about serial abuser and now former garda Paul Moody, the head of the Garda watchdog body, Emily Logan, has said.<\/p>\n

Moody was not properly investigated at the time and then went on subject another woman to years of abuse. Last week he was jailed for four years and nine months<\/a> for his crimes against his first victim.<\/p>\n

That woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said in her victim impact statement at the Circuit Criminal Court that her complaint in 2017 to the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Ombudsman Commission<\/a> (Gsoc), now Fiosr\u00fa, should have been acted on.<\/p>\n

She added Moody could have been stopped at that stage, before going on to abuse his second victim, Nicola Hanney, who was his subsequent partner.<\/p>\n

When he was jailed last week, Moody had already served the three-year sentence imposed on him for his abuse of Hanney, who waived her right to anonymity.<\/p>\n

When the first victim went to Gsoc in 2017 and made a complaint, the investigation was discontinued with no outcome. It was stopped in March 2023, some nine months after Moody was jailed for his abuse of his second known victim.<\/p>\n

His first victim said last week she was met with \u201ca wall of silence\u201d from Gsoc, describing her treatment as \u201cneglect\u201d and \u201ca betrayal of trust\u201d which left Moody free to go on and form a relationship with Hanney and abuse her.<\/p>\n

Logan said that although she has been in her position since April 2025, when she \u201clooked back and parsed that investigation\u201d she believed the outcome was wrong. She understood the victim must have felt \u201cvery let down by that experience\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to be clear and say what happened to [Moody\u2019s first victim] … was wholly unacceptable. It was unacceptable, there\u2019s no question about that,\u201d she told RT\u00c9 Radio 1\u2019s This Week.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Investigation into complaints against ex-garda Paul Moody faced delays, ombudsman saysOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Logan said \u201cthe victim is absolutely right\u201d in her assertion that Moody could have been stopped and his second victim, Hanney, spared her ordeal. She added \u201cthe experience of not being listened to or not being responded to\u201d was not acceptable.<\/p>\n

She had also written to the first victim and extended an invitation to meet to discuss how her complaint had been mishandled by Gsoc, which was reconstituted as Fiosr\u00fa last year in a shake-up of the Garda oversight agencies.<\/p>\n

Logan said new steps were being taken to ensure such cases are better managed and fully investigated, with a particular emphasis on carefully examining Fiosr\u00fa\u2019s first engagement with a complainant in cases of gender-based violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not unusual in these circumstances for victims to make a complaint and then retract, that\u2019s very, very common,\u201d she said. Gender violence expert Noeline Blackwell had also been appointed to offer advice and to be Fiosr\u00fa\u2019s \u201cexternal eye\u201d.<\/p>\n

Blackwell, former head of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, would also critique Fiosr\u00fa\u2019s work as a new specialist unit was put in place to respond to complaints made about Garda members that had a gender-based or sexual dimension. <\/p>\n

Victim-support workers would also be seconded from Women\u2019s Aid in an effort to \u201cmitigate the risk\u201d around a complainant making an initial allegation and then withdrawing it. This often happened because they had been traumatised after having been abused or attacked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fiosr\u00fa, which investigates complaints made against garda\u00ed, conducted itself in an \u201cunacceptable\u201d manner when the first complaint was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[956,9,10,18,13,14,5650,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":["post-501095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-fiosru","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501095","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=501095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}