The “lie” about the circumstances of the death of Savita Halappanavar in University Hospital Galway in 2012 began with a report in The Irish Times, retired journalist John Waters has claimed in court.
He said the publication of the report, written mainly by Social Affairs Correspondent Kitty Holland, led to a “cascade that went around the world” and rebounded back to Ireland, where it changed people’s disposition in relation to the issue of abortion.
Mr Waters, of Sandycove, Dublin, was giving evidence in the Dublin Circuit Civil Court where Ms Holland, of Ranelagh, Dublin, is claiming damages, including aggravated damages, arising from remarks by Mr Waters during an address in 2017 to a Renua Ireland conference in Tullamore, which was also posted online.
Ms Holland is claiming that Mr Waters’ reference to the “journalist who started the lie” about Ms Halappanavar, who died from septicaemia a week after presenting at the Galway hospital, was an obvious reference to her and meant she was dishonest and not fit to be a journalist.
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Responding to questions from his counsel, Feargal Kavanagh SC, Mr Waters said the lie was that Ms Halappanavar (31) had died as a result of the Eighth Amendment on abortion and that her pleas for a termination of her pregnancy had been “ignored by her doctors” because of their Catholic beliefs, “which was a complete lie”.
Mr Waters said the most important aspect of what had happened had to do with sequencing – when Ms Halappanavar had requested a termination and when the diagnosis of sepsis was made. The report in The Irish Times “misdirected” the reader in relation to how they should interpret what had happened, he said.
A line in the report that Ms Halappanavar was told by her consultant her requests for a termination could not be complied with as “this is a Catholic country” was “the bomb at the centre of the article”, but it later transpired that this was said not by the consultant in charge of her treatment but by a midwife during a conversation with Ms Halappanavar when she was crying.
Kevin O’Sullivan, Environment and Science Editor with The Irish Times, who was editor of The Irish Times between 2011 and 2017, said it was immediately clear to him in 2012 that the story of Ms Halappanavar was “potentially huge” when it was first mentioned.
“We knew there was a risk it could be weaponised and were careful about how we went about the story because of that,” he said, adding that a team of people worked on overseeing the story.
The Irish Times, he said, would not succumb to “some sort of covert operation” to secure a particular outcome. The initial story was a fact-based report on a matter of major public interest and subsequent inquiries into Ms Halappanavar’s death had endorsed the position taken by The Irish Times, he said.
It was reasonable to conclude that the Eighth Amendment made it more difficult for the medical staff to treat Ms Halappanavar and it was never said by The Irish Times that there had not been other contributing factors behind her death, he said.
Mr Kavanagh put it to the witness that when Ms Halappanavar was diagnosed with sepsis, the decision was made to terminate her pregnancy despite there still being a foetal heartbeat. Mr O’Sullivan said at the time of publication the “critical mass” existed to justify a story that was “of huge public interest”. Subsequent inquiries had shown there was a delay in Ms Halappanavar’s treatment and this contributed to her death.
Mr O’Sullivan said he fundamentally disagreed with the contention that the report was “the seed for a lie”.
“There was no rush to print,” he told Andrew Walker SC, for Ms Holland.
The evidence of Mr Waters continues.
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