{"id":254543,"date":"2026-01-20T16:27:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T16:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254543\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T16:27:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T16:27:09","slug":"woman-claims-judge-sexually-assaulted-her-at-colm-gooch-coopers-book-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/254543\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman claims judge sexually assaulted her at Colm \u2018Gooch\u2019 Cooper\u2019s book launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">Retired judge James O\u2019Connor rejected the allegations, describing them as \u201cmalicious, ill-motivated and entirely unfounded\u201dA garda investigation into the allegations did not result in a prosecution\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Retired judge James O\u2019Connor faces claim of sexual assault in High Court civil action (Pic: Michelle Cooper Galvin)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/00101f16-d17b-4d88-a098-34e3ec4c48a1.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Retired judge James O\u2019Connor faces claim of sexual assault in High Court civil action (Pic: Michelle Cooper Galvin)<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A woman has claimed in High Court proceedings that she was sexually assaulted by a sitting judge at the launch of the autobiography of Gaelic football star Colm \u2018Gooch\u2019 Cooper.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">The allegation, which relates to an event at a Killarney hotel nine years ago, has been vehemently denied by James O\u2019Connor, a now retired district court judge who was based in Co Kerry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Retired judge James O\u2019Connor rejected the allegations, describing them as \u201cmalicious, ill-motivated and entirely unfounded\u201dA garda investigation into&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43,9657],"class_list":["post-254543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-shane-phelan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}