Northern Ireland: Almost A Year After Threats Against Patricia Devlin, Impunity Causes Concern

Location: Northern Ireland, Belfast
Date: September 26, 2020

Patricia Devlin, an award-winning crime reporter working for the Sunday World, has been target of vicious online attacks and threats to her family since 2019 for her coverage on crime, drug and criminal gangs, and how their activities are intertwined with certain loyalist paramilitary groups.

Northern Ireland has seen a rise in crime and paramilitary and sectarian attacks for the past two years due to the economic crisis and fallout from Brexit. As with any sectarian paramilitary movements, said groups turn their attacks towards women journalists. In April 2019, freelance reporter Lyra McKee was killed, and Patricia has been experiencing a rising level of abuse and threats on social media from the beginning of 2019, mostly from anonymous social media trolls calling her misogynistic slurs and threatening her with death and rape.

In an interview Patricia gave to CPJ, she said: “the threats first took a sinister turn in April 2019 when an anonymous profile on Twitter posted publicly that I had “target on my back.” This post followed another full day of orchestrated trolling by members of a mob which I had been writing about regularly.”

Patricia Devlin, who won the News Reporter of the Year and the Scoop of the Year titles at the 2014 Regional Press Awards, then received rape threats against her newborn son in October 2019, following a targeted doxxing campaign which gave out the address of the journalist and named her family members.

Patricia said the abuse is “sectarian and misogynistic in nature”, while all of the online accounts behind the posts are anonymous – with some being set up solely to target her. Although she filed a complaint against the vicious and despicable threats against her and her family, no action has been taken against the perpetrators yet. However, in June, police officers warned Patricia along with other journalists against possible attacks in their homes and vehicles.

During an interview with BBC, Patricia says that the rape threats against her baby boy was the most disturbing she has received, to the point that she considered leaving journalism.

When speaking to CPJ she said she then reconsidered her decision due to her determination to make the world a better and safer place: “The only reason I am a journalist is because I want to expose crime and criminal behavior and their impact on our communities. These threats prevent me from doing my reporting properly. I became a journalist because I wanted to make the world a better place. To expose crime and those who are terrorizing communities so that all of us, including our children, can lead a peaceful life. It makes me sad to see that threats and abuse against journalists is becoming normalized in Northern Ireland, which seems to have taken a huge step back in time. I often feel that we are back to square one.”

The Coalition For Women In Journalism has been following online attacks against women journalists around the world with great concern. Continual targeting of women journalists on public forums is aimed at preventing women occupying public spaces and silencing women’s voices. Online abuse has serious offline consequences which can lead to physical attacks, house break ins and in worst cases murder It is important to understand online harassment as a serious attack used in a way to keep women from full participation in discussions crucial to society, which is where threats against women journalists play a huge role. We call upon Northern Ireland authorities to ensure Patricia’s and other journalist’s safety and take concerns about online abuse seriously.

The CFWIJ strongly condemns the police brutality against journalists. We demand the immediate return of the press cards seized from the security forces. Policies to intimidate journalists should be abandoned, and journalism should be practiced under the criteria of freedom of the press.

If you have been harassed or abused in any way, and please report the incident by using the following form.