English journalist Ian Bailey yesterday told how his professional life had been ruined and how it was a struggle for him to survive after a number of newspapers published articles linking him to the murder of French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
"I haven't been able to find any work as a professional - it has made survival difficult - just getting here today has been a very long struggle," Mr Bailey told the third day of libel appeals against six newspaper titles at the High Court in Cork.
Mr Bailey (50), the Prairie, Liscaha, Schull, is suing the Sunday Times, the Times, the Sunday Independent, the Independent on Sunday, the Starand the Daily Telegraphfor libel over reports which, he claims, wrongly linked him to Ms Toscan du Plantier's murder.
Mr Bailey outlined to his counsel, Tom Creed SC, how the coverage of Ms Toscan du Plantier's murder at her holiday home at Toormore near Schull in December 1996 has affected both him and his partner, Jules Thomas, as they have tried to go about their lives.
"There have been different stages, ranging from extremely difficult to virtually impossible. It has been the most excruciatingly awful episode to know that you have nothing to do with this matter [the murder] and then to be so publicly linked to it.
"The first five years have been almost impossible. From the time of my arrest, I have tried to continue with some sort of normality but there was no normality in my life . . . sometimes words fail me, they shouldn't because I'm a wordsmith and a journalist. It's been torture." Mr Bailey said the press coverage which wrongly linked him to the killing not only affected himself and Ms Thomas but it had also had a dramatic impact on the local community in Schull and surrounding areas which was very divided as a result.
"It's created a schism in the community. There are those who say 'No, there's no proof, he's innocent' and there are those who say 'No, they wouldn't have printed that unless he did it'," he said, adding that his home had been subjected to vigilante attacks after his last libel case.
Asked by Mr Creed if he had not thought of leaving west Cork, Mr Bailey said it had been suggested to him on several occasions but he believed that moving would be a mistake and the damage the papers had caused his reputation had to be tackled.
"My own view has always been that I was never going to move away and neither was this matter ever going to go away. But it was something that I was always going to have to deal with and my being here today is part of that process," he said.
Mr Creed went through two reports in the Sunday Independentand the Independent on Sundayby Brighid McLaughlin which, Mr Bailey said, had tried to put a sinister spin on mundane matters and which contained several serious inaccuracies linking him to the killing.
He angrily dismissed a mention in one of the reports that he had burned clothes. "It's one of the many dirty rotten, stinking lies that are printed here - it's very damning, it's very damaging. I found it damaging then and it's still damaging - it implicates me in the crime.
"Under our law, a person has the right of presumed innocence. That has been removed by these articles. I have been trying to prove a negative which is almost an impossibility - how did this situation occur?"
The case continues before Mr Justice Brian McGovern.
