misuse of notes in criminal cases<\/a>.<\/p>\nThe therapist at the centre of the incident said garda\u00ed who searched her family home had been “aggressive and threatening”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We were so distressed. Asking what it was about they said with great intimidation that I was obstructing a criminal investigation. They stated they were there to search my property and if I didn\u2019t comply I would be arrested.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The search warrant was issued in Galway district court on April 8, 2026.<\/p>\n
A detective from Dublin and her team were authorised to search a property in Galway and the warrant set out that they could seize anything believed to be \u201cevidence of, or relating to, the commission of an arrestable offence”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bairbre Kelly, founder of Therapists Against Harm, said that searching the therapist’s home was “an appalling abuse of power”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n A therapist upheld her ethical duty, respected her client\u2019s consent, and for that she was treated like a criminal in her own home.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cThat should alarm every single person in this country. This is not a grey area. This is a system that is overriding basic principles of consent, confidentiality, and care – and doing so with force.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The message being sent is clear: that therapeutic spaces are not safe.<\/p>\n
Ms Kelly, who has been supporting the therapist at the centre of the case, said that this is the first time she has heard of a therapist\u2019s private home being searched for counselling notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it’s very common for therapists to feel coerced or very uncomfortable during the process of seizing their notes.”<\/p>\n
As a therapist herself, Ms Kelly said that she has felt intimidated in the past by garda\u00ed requesting a client\u2019s clinical notes.<\/p>\n
Client\u2019s will often agree to hand over their notes, having been told that it will strengthen their case, Ms Kelly said.<\/p>\n
But the survivor often does not realise that the alleged attacker and their legal team will then also have access to the documents.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s very much then a weaponizing of their notes with the defence lawyers looking for a way to discredit them.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany therapists are getting phone calls from garda\u00ed saying, \u2018your client signed over permission for us to get these notes\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we refuse to hand the notes over until our client has gotten legal advice, then the notes may be subpoenaed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd even if our client says, ‘please don’t hand over the notes’, if those notes are subpoenaed and the therapist refuses to release them, we could be in contempt of court.”<\/p>\n
People Before Profit\/ Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger, who raised the matter in the D\u00e1il, said that the case raises urgent questions about the treatment of therapists, the protection of confidential therapeutic spaces, and the continued use of counselling notes in sexual offence cases.<\/p>\n
“At the root of this is the centrality given to counselling notes in gender based violence trials. Therapy notes are not evidence and the government needs to end this practice totally, not amend it and keep the chilling effect in place.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The irony is this client did not speak to the therapist about her experience of sexual violence as she feared her notes would be used against her.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garda headquarters said that a search warrant was issued by a court as part of an ongoing investigation.<\/p>\n
“If anyone has a complaint about the behaviour of garda\u00ed, a complaint process is available by contacting local Garda management or the independent Garda ombudsman, Fiosr\u00fa,” they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Garda\u00ed have been criticised after seizing the counselling notes from a therapist’s home of a woman who reported…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[54,103,61,60,410,411,15304],"class_list":["post-415204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-courts","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-sexual-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415204","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=415204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}