Kirk Loco has been acquitted, which is both the correct result, and an encouraging one. Yet his case exposes something very sinister in Irish policing.
A recap, for those of you new to the case: Over two years ago, in June 2024, Loco sent out a tweet from a Twitter account he operated, using a pseudonym.
The tweet alleged that an intoxicated asylum seeker living at Trudder House in Newtownmountkennedy had exposed himself to a 14-year-old girl on the 133 bus travelling between Dublin and Wicklow.
It included a photograph of the man, apparently asleep on the bus, and encouraged readers to share the allegation. It further denounced a list of people that Kirk felt were politically responsible for the situation, and accused them of “cheering on pedophilia”.
Now there is, of course, a difference between legal and wise. And I’d argue, dear reader, that Kirk’s tweet was not wise: Sharing photos of people and linking them to crimes is a risky business, not least because you’ll be in a world of defamation pain if you are wrong about their guilt.
The cops, in this instance, however, don’t seem to have been all that interested in whether Kirk was right or wrong in what he actually said. Instead, according to evidence at his trial, six Gardaí descended on his home at 6.30 in the morning, seized his devices, and proceeded to charge him with a breach of Section 4 of the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, also known as “Coco’s Law”.
Now, here we should take a detour, because this I think is the most disturbing part of the whole affair.
Coco’s Law was named for Nicole “Coco” Fox, a 21-year-old woman who took her own life in 2018 after a sustained campaign of bullying. Oddly, the legislation bearing her name is now best known for its provisions criminalising the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, something which was not, as far as the public record shows, part of Nicole’s own experience.
It is, in essence, Ireland’s “revenge porn” law, though its scope goes considerably further.
The section that Kirk Loco was charged under, section four, is the most oblique and wide-ranging part of the law. Here’s how that reads:
“4. (1) A person who—
(a) by any means—
(i) distributes or publishes any threatening or grossly offensive communication about another person, or
(ii) sends any threatening or grossly offensive communication to another person,
and
(b) with intent by so distributing, publishing or sending to cause harm,
is guilty of an offence.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1), a person intends to cause harm where he or she, by his or her acts, intentionally seriously interferes with the other person’s peace and privacy or causes alarm or distress to the other person.
(3) A person who is guilty of an offence under this section is liable—
(a) on summary conviction to a class A fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or both, or
(b) on conviction on indictment to a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both.”
You will notice a few things, if you read that section carefully.
First, it is very vague. For example, the term “grossly offensive communication” is very much an “eye of the beholder” sort of definition. As is “cause harm”. Does somebody who, for example, refers to me as a “Zionist Pig” on X, meet the threshold of gross offensiveness in an attempt to cause me, at the very least, emotional harm? Or would the prosecution have to prove something more than the mere fact that I was offended?
Second, it strikes me that this is what we might term a “creative prosecution”. Kirk was not charged with hate speech, or inciting violence. Instead, the DPP and the cops appear to me to have scoured the statute book and come up with “interfering with another person’s peace and privacy”, and promptly decided to prosecute Kirk on a charge that could have seen him sent down for two years.
Or as the man once said, show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.
Of course, this all had one basic problem, which is that there was rather more to the original allegation than the prosecution’s case might have suggested.
The 14-year-old girl in question actually appeared at his trial, to confirm that she had seen the man’s belt open and some of his pubic hair exposed. The court also heard that another female passenger had complained to the bus driver after the man sat beside her, and that she had reported him touching her leg. CCTV showed the man moving seats, though Gardaí maintained that it contradicted the allegation of exposure. In other words, while the precise allegation in Kirk’s tweet was disputed, there was plainly a real incident on the bus, and real evidence behind the concerns that prompted it.
Consequently, Kirk is a free man. Acquitted. As he should be.
But there are numerous questions that must now be asked.
First, who gave the order to send six cops to Kirk’s house at dawn to arrest him and seize his devices?
Second, to what extent did the Irish cops investigate the underlying incident? Because while they examined CCTV and interviewed the man accused in the tweet, evidence at the trial indicated that they had not even taken a statement from the 14-year-old girl herself. How does that happen?
Third, is this the kind of thing that Coco’s Law was actually intended to prosecute? It was named for a victim of a sustained and targeted campaign of bullying – not a single drive-by tweet about somebody else’s conduct.
And fourth, why did the Gardaí and the DPP believe they could prove that Kirk had published the tweet with the specific intention of causing harm? It is, after all, perfectly possible to publish something offensive about somebody without having the intention of causing them harm. Journalists do it every day.
The precedent that the authorities apparently sought to establish by this prosecution is obvious – though of course the cops don’t seem to care. Imagine a scenario where some cyclist (I know, saints, right?) hits my wing mirror and I, in a fit of rage, tweet out a picture of the offender cycling away, accusing him of reckless cycling.
Is that a grossly offensive communication? Probably not, but given the interpretation of the law that the cops sought to apply to Kirk, you might be forgiven for wondering where the line is drawn.
Kirk has been acquitted. A word here, by the way, for his legal team – solicitor Pádraig Langsch and barrister (and friend of the podcast) Laoise de Brún, who did him proud.
What should now follow is an enquiry into the circumstances of his prosecution. It seems to me that the state has failed here. And while an acquittal is not, by itself, proof of improper motives, I find it very difficult to escape the suspicion that this prosecution had, somewhere along the line, quite a nasty little political motivation.
For that, somebody should be held accountable.
Politicial prosecution with a capital P
The Garda really should be ashamed of there actions in this case they seemed to have went on a mission to destroy this man and protect the prevert immgrant and not a thought for thd young girls safety .