In 2018 Doireann Garrihy was at the centre of a viral WhatsApp thread, over rumours surrounding her love-life.
At the time Doireann was dating Joe Melody and a series of voice messages were released in which a girl claimed Doireann’s boyfriend left another woman for her.
Whilst on Dara Quilty’s Different podcast recently, Doireann opened up about how horrific this time was, both for her and her family, saying it was ‘the worst thing ever’.
“I started listening to the voice notes, and it was basically a girl saying that the guy I was with at the time, that I had stolen him from another girl, and that they had been borderline engaged, they were about to build a house together, all of this stuff!”
She revealed that this incident was ‘one of the worst things that happened’ as she had never experienced hate or negativity from her fans before.
As the rumours were untrue, initially Doireann described herself as thinking “It was just this fabricated shite… the facts were so mad. It was just beyond, but it was so fabricated that I actually didn’t worry because it was so stupid.”
Unfortunately this wasn’t the case as the radio DJ was quickly inundated with horrible messages; “I had to block the words ‘sl*t’, ‘wh*re’, ‘man stealer’, ‘farmer’, because he was a farmer, ‘Justice for Jane’, because that was the girl’s name.”
“I had to block all these comments, and I remember sitting at my parent’s kitchen table, and what was so hard about it was that my parents didn’t understand how fast these things grow online.”
Doireann described her parents as thinking it was all “gonna blow over” and that they didn’t realise how serious it was until her sister Ailbhe got upset in front of them.
Sadly, this name and shame culture is everywhere on the internet, with many people quick to believe rumours and lash about before they know the facts. Doireann and Joe denied the story and took to Instagram stories to clarify that there was no truth to it, with an email for the woman confirming it was not too.
However Doireann revealed; “It was the fact that I was suffering the consequences of something I hadn’t done was actually the worst thing ever.”
“And whatever about the ones going ‘you’re a wh*re’, ‘you’re a sl*t’… the worst messages were, ‘Doireann I really don’t want to believe this, I’ve followed you for years, is it true?’ and that just broke my heart because I didn’t want to respond to people, because if I respond then it looks like I’m guilty.”
The story is most definitely old news now, and thankfully it all blew over fairly quickly for the popular presenter; “It has gone away since and sure people just, it has blown over and I knew it would.”
“I had always learned, even from my sister Aoibhin, if something like that happens it is always going to be old news in a couple of days and thank god it was.”
