A judge has reprimanded a County Clare woman for her use of Twitter saying “who do you think you are? Ms Vardy and Ms The-Other-One?”.
At the Family Law Court in Ennis, Judge Mary Larkin referenced the recent libel trial involving Rebekah Vardy and Coleen Rooney in the High Court in London after hearing that the woman was engaging in ‘disgraceful” behaviour when tweeting about her ex-partner on Twitter.
Solicitor for the man, Mairéad Doyle told Judge Larkin that the woman has been “digging constantly at my client on Twitter”.
Ms Doyle said that the woman “is an avid Twitter user and has always tweeted about my client”.
Ms Doyle was making an application that the woman provide a sworn undertaking to court that she no longer tweet about her ex-partner and make no further reference on her Twitter account to Family Law proceedings.
Ms Doyle said that the woman had engaged in “stupid and disgraceful behaviour” concerning her tweets.
Solicitor for the woman, Ann Walsh told Judge Larkin that her client “is somewhat naive when it comes to the use of Twitter”. Ms Walsh said that it was a private Twitter account.
After being handed a print out of a selection of the tweets, Judge Larkin described them as ‘garbage”.
Judge Larkin read one tweet from the woman which stated “Only takes one arsehole to ruin your evening”.
Ms Doyle said that a result of the tweets, people are saying to her client’s family members ‘My God, what kind of a Dad is he with the way is he behaving?’”
Expletive laden insulting WhatApp messages featured prominently in the recent Vardy-Rooney case and Judge Larkin asked the woman: “Who do you think you are? Ms Vardy and Ms The-Other-One?”
She said: “Haven’t we seen enough of that lately? People washing their dirty laundry in public?”
Ms Doyle said that the woman “needs to know the consequences of breaching an order”.
After the woman agreed to not tweet any more about her ex-partner or to refer to family court proceedings, Judge Larkin warned her that if she breaches the court undertaking “it is open to me to jail you for contempt of court. I hope that won’t be necessary”.
The woman apologised for a tweet the evening before the court obliquely referring to the upcoming family law proceedings.
The woman said: “I know I shouldn’t – I apologise. I was anxious about the case and I was looking to vent.”
Judge Larkin said: “It has to stop. It is awful, just awful. If I hear of it again I will entertain an application to have your ex-partner have custody of the child.”
Judge Larkin commented: “God be with the days when people wrote their thoughts down in a diary. You don’t throw it out there for the whole word to see.”
“Everything you have written online can be shown to your child and is out there in the ether.”
Judge Larkin said that the sworn undertaking relating to the woman not referring to your ex-partner and family law proceedings on Twitter be also be extended to her use of Facebook and Instagram.
