Green td is silent as female rivals abused by text

A PROMINENT Green Party TD and Oireachtas committee chairman has been embroiled in a row over a sickening series of slurs against women, the Irish Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Brian Leddin, chair of the powerful Oireachtas Environment and Climate Action Committee, apologised last night for some comments he made in a WhatsApp group he set up in 2017.

Other comments made by members of the policy-focused group, which included figures with prominent positions in Limerick, repeatedly referred to women viewed as rivals with misogynistic abuse.

In one shocking instance, a photograph of a well-known Limerick professional – who was in dispute with members of the group – had the word ‘c***’ superimposed on it in capital letters and was temporarily adopted as the group profile picture.

This change occurred after her name was suggested – apparently ironically – by Deputy Leddin as an appropriate new picture, despite the group’s feelings towards the professional.

Other messages contained abuse and threatening comments about Limerick-based councillor Elisa O’Donovan. In one message a member of the group said Cllr O’Donovan ‘must be ended’ and in another, a female member also called Cllr O’Donovan a ‘c***’.

Mr Leddin did not make or comment on any of the abusive or threatening messages made about Ms O’Donovan in the group. But on another occasion in the group, he described the councillor as ‘unhinged’, saying ‘she craves fame’.

In a statement to the MoS this weekend, Mr Leddin admitted he was a member of the private Whats- App group, which he said was made up of ‘a small number of men and women who were interested in planning and heritage issues in Limerick city’.

He acknowledged ‘some of the language’ used by some of the members was ‘unsavoury and inappropriate’.

Mr Leddin, who made history when he became the first Green Party candidate to be elected as a Limerick TD in the 2020 election, added: ‘To be clear, I did not encourage such comments or engage with them but, on reflection, should have intervened to voice my unhappiness with such language.’

The Green TD said he has since left the WhatsApp group. He added he regretted his comment about Ms O’Donovan, saying it was ‘inappropriate’ and that he has since apologised to her for it.

But, when it was pointed out to Mr Leddin that his statement did not apologise to the female professional – who has asked to remain anonymous – he declined an opportunity to change his statement.

Ms O’Donovan said this weekend she was ‘very disappointed’ with Mr Leddin’s statement.

She told the MoS: ‘To say he did not encourage and only made one remark is quite unbelievable. He laughed with emojis when people called me a “c***”. He called me unhinged. He told the group that I had a long, long campaign of passive-aggressive slurs against him.

‘As someone who is a victim of these “unsavoury and inappropriate” comments, I am appalled at how he is trivialising such a serious matter,’ she said.

The worst instance of misogynis- abuse saw the ‘c***’ slur made against the female professional in a 2019 exchange when the group decided to replace the original profile picture which had, until then, consisted of a photo of Mr Leddin.

In the exchange, Mr Leddin, who at the time was a Green Party councillor in Limerick, is the person who suggests that a photo of the female professional be used.

Although he did not post the denigrating photo himself, Mr Leddin stood by as others joked about it.

‘Lol. No. Can’t be looking at it,’ responded one member.

‘Our profile pic is my new darts board,’ joked another member.

Speaking to the MoS, the victim of the photo smear said she never received an apology after the material was revealed by a whistleblower earlier this year.

‘It was done without my consent or permission,’ she said of the photo slur.

‘It was Brian Leddin who initiated it. He put my name up there. He was the person who proposed my name. He never once told them to stop. He joined in with the conversation.

‘I regard the inappropriate comments on the WhatsApp Group as derogatory, misogynistic and abusive and completely unacceptable behaviour from a public representative,’ she added.

The victim described other instances of abuse by the group.

‘There is a further screenshot in relation to a grenade being thrown at me – I was going to be blown up on the bridge – and there are other parts where I am referred to as a witch. There are conversations in which I am to be incinerated.’

The professional woman described how being subjected to this treatment made her feel vulnerable and in physical danger.

‘It’s a different type of harasstic ment. It’s not like somebody came to my house with a gun or sent in death threats to me but it’s there. I was frightened. I was afraid to go outside the building at one stage,’ she said.

The woman said she had already informed gardaí about her concerns before becoming aware of the detail in the leaked WhatsApp group because of similar abuse on public social media platforms.

‘It was necessary for me to go to the gardaí to put this on record in case anything happened,’ she said.

Cllr O’Donovan also made a formal complaint to gardaí.

‘I just felt like I wanted to keep myself safe,’ she said. ‘One thing that I’ve learnt is that if you feel like you are in any way unsafe, you’re being harassed, then it’s very, very important to notify the guards so they know what’s going on… it’s difficult for the guards but at least they are aware what’s going on and they can keep a check on it.’

In various exchanges in the Whats- App group, at a time when Mr Leddin was present in the conversation, members discuss ‘ending’ Cllr O’Donovan as suitable locations to bury her are discussed.

At other times she is referred to in sexual terms.

‘I nearly would if that drunk and she didn’t talk,’ a female member wrote during a discussion about Ms O’Donovan’s physical appearance. In another comment the councillor was compared to a giraffe.

Ms O’Donovan told the MoS: ‘I felt like there was a level of harassment towards me online and on social media and then when these chats came out about me being ended… the way they’re speaking about me in this group is just horrible. It is harassment.’

Although present in these conversations, Mr Leddin never interjects to call a halt to the abuse. Instead, he largely remains silent as the woman are denigrated.

At one point, though, he interjects in a discussion to call Ms O’Donovan fame-hungry and ‘unhinged’.

‘She craves fame, so this could be typical unhinged Elisa, or it could be her way of getting some national media to pick up on her.’

Those comments were made in response to Ms O’Donovan complaining on Twitter that her head – but not her breasts – were cropped from online news coverage.

Ms O’Donovan said she was very disappointed to learn of the Whats- App abuse directed at her.

‘It’s just a huge disappointment,’ she said. ‘They are really not nice to read. They are really disrespectful and they are really derogatory.’

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‘It’s a really, nasty, toxic way to do politics,’ Ms O’Donovan said. ‘I’ve never, ever had to put other people down to elevate myself and what is really happening here is they have had to put other people down, be it myself or other women, to elevate Brian.’

Ms O’Donovan, a former Social Democrat, who turned independent, said public representatives ‘have a duty to not shame and be disrespectful of women’.

‘I’ve been in WhatsApp groups and I’ve never spoken about my fellow elected reps in that way and we do have a duty as elected reps to not engage in these sorts of conversations in which women are spoken about. Particularly as a male politician, you have that duty, I think, and Brian didn’t. He encouraged it really and that’s disappointing.’

Unlike the other victim targeted by the group, Cllr O’Donovan received a text apology from Mr Leddin. But this only came after the TD became aware that another national newspaper was considering publishing his comments about Cllr O’Donovan being ‘unhinged’.

Referring to Mr Leddin’s apology, Ms O’Donovan said: ‘It was weak. It meant nothing to me. He could have stopped this. He could have said “no”. Brian speaks about progressive politics and supporting women. He co-opted a woman into his position as a councillor, yet behind the scenes the misogyny really does show. And that’s where it counts.

‘It’s what you do in private that counts and how you think about women and those chats really says it all about how they are speaking about women.’

The other victim of the WhatsApp abuse last night said that Mr Leddin’s failure to apologise to her ‘demonstrates his callous attitude’ to ‘the vulgar, vitriolic abuse towards me and reveals a complete disrespect for women’.

She said: ‘This type of disgraceful behaviour has no place in Irish politics. I call on Brian Leddin to seriously consider his position and I call on his party leader, Eamon Ryan, and the Government to condemn this unacceptable, inappropriate, threatening and inexcusable conduct.’