{"id":330230,"date":"2026-03-05T12:11:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330230\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T12:11:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:11:07","slug":"speculation-on-circulated-graphic-image-of-student-was-harming-community-says-ucd-president-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/330230\/","title":{"rendered":"Speculation on circulated graphic image of student was \u2018harming\u2019 community, says UCD president \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public \u201cspeculation\u201d about a case of alleged image-based abuse of a University College Dublin<\/a> medicine student was \u201charming\u201d the UCD community, the college\u2019s president Orla Feely<\/a> has said. <\/p>\n

In a lengthy statement to staff on Wednesday, as more than a thousand people protested at the Belfield campus about the university\u2019s<\/a> response to the case, Feely sent out a further update from the college. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause speculation in the public domain is now harming our students, staff and other members of our community, I am writing to provide some clarification on material now in circulation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s protest was called by the UCD students union after a \u201cnude, bruised\u201d intimate image of the young woman after allegedly being sexually assaulted, was shared with staff and students, via email and WhatsApp groups, last year.<\/p>\n

The case was raised in recent weeks by Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger<\/a> in the D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot in our UCD\u201d, \u201cwe stand with her\u201d and \u201cshame\u201d were chanted by those at Wednesday\u2019s protest, with many of those present carrying placards bearing these and other statements.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Photo of UCD student \u2018nude, bruised and unconscious\u2019 was shared with students and staff, TD tells D\u00e1ilOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In her statement Feely said it was \u201cabsolutely not the case\u201d that the university knew the identity of any perpetrator or perpetrators or whose had allegedly shared the images, despite speculation to the contrary. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile there have been questions about why we are not progressing an internal investigation, we cannot do this in parallel with an ongoing Garda criminal investigation of this complexity, as this may prejudice any future criminal case and prevent justice ultimately being served,\u201d said Feely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe garda\u00ed have the forensic, technical and legal expertise to investigate and are the appropriate authority.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cabhorrent messages and obscene images\u201d that were circulated \u201ccame from unidentified email accounts and unknown phone numbers\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

She added that it was \u201cimportant to be absolutely clear that we have no evidence to suggest that these were further circulated by staff or students of the university other than in support of the response and the Garda investigation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Until now, she said, to protect parties\u2019 privacy and to comply with a High Court order that imposed restrictions on identifying the woman and the university in a case she brought against the university, UCD had taken \u201cextreme care when commenting on this\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday afternoon, the judge varied the court order to permit the identification of the university,\u201d she said, adding that it was \u201cvery important that the anonymity of the student continues to be protected\u201d.<\/p>\n

In her judgment on a case taken last year by the young woman against UCD, Judge Marguerite Bolger ordered that neither the student, witnesses, nor UCD be identifiable.<\/p>\n

The judgment was published on February 3rd. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis judgment cannot be published on courts.ie, the world wide web or any public media other than in its current anonymised form or in a manner that might directly or indirectly identify any of the anonymised persons or entities,\u201d the judge ordered.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday UCD successfully applied to have this order varied to allow the university to be identified.<\/p>\n

The student lost the case, in which she took issue with how UCD had required her to take steps to pass modules she had difficulty completing in the aftermath of an alleged rape. <\/p>\n

Describing the alleged image-based abuse suffered by the woman as \u201cextremely distressing and complex\u201d, Feely said: \u201cThe needs of our student have been at the centre of the university\u2019s response throughout. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe care deeply about the trauma and anguish that she has experienced. We are also concerned about the distress caused to our wider community of students and staff, particularly in the School of Medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public \u201cspeculation\u201d about a case of alleged image-based abuse of a University College Dublin medicine student was \u201charming\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330231,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1346,73,61,60,43,5762],"class_list":["post-330230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-garda-siochana","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-ucd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330230","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=330230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330230\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}