Press conviction

Press reports since the Wayne O'Donoghue sentencing have been characterised by contradictory, intrusive and libellous claims about O'Donoghue, and have repeatedly relied on unnamed Garda sources to advance claims that he was a sex abuser. Colin Murphy reports

Recent press reports on the Wayne O'Donoghue case have said senior gardaí (including a former assistant commissioner) had lobbied the DPP to have "sex abuse evidence" included in the trial, and that gardaí had suspected O'Donoghue abused Robert Holohan before DNA evidence "confirmed" it. Reports in Ireland on Sunday quoted from the Garda transcript of their interview with Wayne O'Donoghue and from his prison "file".

Amongst the claims made about the semen found on Robert Holohan's hand, it was variously reported that an initial test had established this was Wayne O'Donoghue's, but a second test had cast doubt on this; that the semen was mixed with water; that two semen stains had been found on Robert Holohan's hand, one from O'Donoghue and one from another family member, which had been "innocently" transferred from a mat in his bathroom; and that the method of DNA testing used was unreliable (see article on page 8).

Separate articles have said Wayne O'Donoghue was "happy as Larry" in prison, and that he was "on suicide watch"; that he had a "luxury lifestyle" in prison, and that he was earning €2 per day on cleaning duties; and that his girlfriend was sticking by him, and that she had "dumped" him for another local man.

Since before Majella Holohan's victim impact statement, newspapers have been reporting that gardaí ("top cops", according to the Irish Daily Star) were unhappy with the DPP's handling of the case.

Both the Irish Daily Star and the Sunday World had reported the existence of as-yet unidentified evidence which hadn't been put to the jury.

Then, on Tuesday 24 January, Majella Holohan concluded her victim impact statement at Wayne O'Donoghue's sentencing hearing with a number of unscripted questions.

"Our doctors have told us to try and get on with our lives but how can we, knowing there was semen found on my son's body?" she asked.

She did not state where she believed that semen to have come from, but was reported in the Sun the following day as having said of O'Donoghue separately, "he's a paedophile, that's all he is".

The Sun ran the front page headline "Nothing but a paedophile" alongside a picture of Wayne O'Donoghue in handcuffs. A story inside alleged, "child killer Wayne O'Donoghue has been enjoying secret trysts with a GAY sex offender in prison".

The Evening Herald that day devoted its front page to a photo of Majella Holohan. Beneath the headline was a further line, "'O'Donoghue is like Ian Huntley in Soham' – Rob's Mum". In a further quote from Holohan in the article, she did not say O'Donoghue was "like" Huntley, but said, "if you look at that case of Ian Huntley, he got two 20-year sentences, so what is four years?"

In what the paper described as an "exclusive" and "lengthy" interview, Majella Holohan was reported to have said Wayne O'Donoghue had "preyed on" her son, had "tried to win his confidence with gifts" and had been killed in Wayne O'Donoghue's bedroom.

The article then explained that the interview occurred when the Evening Herald staff doorstepped Majella Holohan after she dropped her daughter off to school, concluding when she locked the gates of her family home and went back inside.

The article quoted Majella Holohan as saying: "There was semen found on his hand but it was mixed with water. What does that tell you? It didn't fall out of the sky." The article did not include any comment from O'Donoghue's solicitor, Frank Buttimer, or any comment challenging the linking of the semen to O'Donoghue.

The following day, Wayne O'Donoghue again occupied the full front page of the Evening Herald. The paper invited O'Donoghue to "go ahead and sue" over reports which carried "claims that the crime may have been sex related".

It described a statement by Frank Buttimer denying that Wayne O'Donoghue was a sex offender as "beneath contempt". Inside, Frank Buttimer was described as a "celebrity solicitor" who had "built a career out of, among other cases, representing a killer and drug dealers in court, arguing on their behalf in the face of evidence against them".

The Irish Daily Mirror reported on Thursday 26 January that Wayne O'Donoghue was "all smiles" in prison, was "happy as Larry" and "showed delight at his pathetic four-year jail sentence".

The article said O'Donoghue "told the Irish Daily Mirror he wasn't a paedophile and denied it was his semen on the body of Robert Holohan."

An article inside quoted a "prison source" as saying of O'Donoghue: "He hasn't threatened to harm himself in any way and spent the day being congratulated by inmates for the sentence he got."

The following day, the Evening Herald, which again devoted its front page to the issue, claimed Wayne O'Donoghue was "on suicide watch".

It cited prison officer sources as describing how O'Donoghue had had items including shoelaces and a belt removed from him after a "security incident" where O'Donoghue "said something to one of the officers" resulting in him being placed under observation and having his sedative dosage increased.

The source described O'Donoghue's reaction to newspaper reports on the Wednesday describing him as a sex abuser: "He ranted and raved. He said 'f**k them. They can't prove any of it. I'll sue'"

According to the Herald, O'Donoghue had "not denied that his semen was on Robert's body".

'Playstation Killer' on rubbish collection duties

On Friday 27 January, the Irish Sun front page proclaimed "Playstation Killer" and claimed "O'Donoghue gets a game console and home cinema in prison", giving him a "luxury lifestyle".

Two days later, Ireland on Sunday reported that O'Donoghue was working as a rubbish collector in prison, earning €2 per day.

The Irish Daily Star on Friday reported on its front page that Wayne O'Donoghue's father was back at work at his car sales business in Cork, and photographed him at his workplace.

Inside, the newspaper ran a large headline, "I knew about the semen on Robert's body". The story claimed that Wayne O'Donoghue's girlfriend, Rebecca Dennehy, had been told about the semen evidence "some time ago", according to an unnamed source. Despite the first-person quotation in the headline, the report said Dennehy had "declined to comment to reporters about the semen sample".

Ireland on Sunday on 29 January reported in an "exclusive" that senior gardaí were angry at so-called "sex abuse evidence" being omitted from the trial and had lobbied the DPP to reconsider.

The report quoted a "senior Garda source" as saying: "Senior officers, including now-retired Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey, tried hard to get the evidence left in but the DPP would not listen."

The article quoted from the official Garda transcript of the Garda interview with O'Donoghue on 17 January 2005, in which O'Donoghue allegedly responded to questions about the semen, "I don't know what to say either" and "110 per cent sure it's not mine".

Ireland on Sunday also quoted from what it described as O'Donoghue's "file", which it claimed gives him a provision release date of 17 January 2008.

In the Sunday World on 29 January, Paul Williams reported that "gardaí who investigated the murder of little Robert Holohan are convinced that he WAS sexually abused by killer Wayne O'Donoghue".

Williams reported that Garda forensic experts believed "much of the valuable DNA evidence had been washed from the body by the wind and rain", and that two semen samples had been found on Robert Holohan's hand – the second sample had been "innocently transferred to the body as it lay on a mat in the bathroom", gardaí believed, wrote Williams.

Williams quoted at length from Garda sources.

"You had to be suspicious of a 20-year-old man keeping company with an 11-year-old boy", one said. Another quote described Wayne O'Donoghue's behaviour after his arrest:

"He seemed too cool and calculated. It was all a big mistake, an accident. If you believe he was abusing Robert, then it was almost the perfect crime."

Detectives had "grilled O'Donoghue at length about his sexuality", Williams wrote. A source told him: "Suddenly we felt there was more to it than met the eye. We suspected already that there was a sexual angle but the DNA confirmed it."

Williams wrote: "There was one chance in seven million that the semen found on Robert could have come from anyone other than Wayne O'Donogue.

"A second semen trace was confirmed to have come from another member of the family. But this was innocently attached to Robert's body when O'Donoghue laid him on a mat on the bathroom floor after he had killed him."

The Sunday World followed Williams's article with a two-page spread under the headline, "How this sentence has made Ireland a more hostile, barbaric place to try and raise a child".

The Sunday World did not quote from either Frank Buttimer's statements on behalf of Wayne O'Donoghue or from Judge Paul Carney's comments at the sentencing that pathologists' reports suggested to him "that the injuries (to Robert Holohan) were at the horseplay end of the scale".

Garda sources were also quoted in the Sunday Mirror, which reported that O'Donoghue's girlfriend, Rebecca Dennehy, had "dumped" him. A Garda source was quoted in the article as saying Rebecca had "made no secret of the fact that she recently met a new man who is in her life now and she is trying to move on".p