A POST SHARED hundreds of times on social media shows a blurry image of a man whom it’s claimed tried to “take a child” in Cahir, Co Tipperary.

However, there is no evidence that there was an attempted child abduction in Cahir recently, and gardaí as well as all the councillors in the Local Electoral Area told The Journal that they had heard no word of such a crime.

“That fella tried taking a child off women in Cahir today,” a caption on a photo of a man walking along the path on what appears to be Abbey Street, Cahir.

“Boys, share everywhere. Bate him everywhere he’s seen. Get him out of Cahir.”

A caption included alongside a blurry picture of a man.

The post, which was published on the Facebook page Clonmel Concerned Residents on 15 May, was shared more than 232 times and viewed more than 17,600 times on Facebook.

A post on X on that day by an account with the same name, reads: “Yesterday this doctor attempted to abduct a 6 yr old girl in Cahir. He’s still on the streets be vigilant apparently a community group has gotten together to sort the issue.”

The term “doctor” is sometimes used by anti-immigrant groups to refer to non-Irish people. The term comes as a sarcastic response to people who say that immigrants can perform important roles in Irish communities, such as working as doctors.

(The man in the photo is white-skinned with dark hair. There is no indication that he is a refugee or a foreign-national).

A similar claim that the man was foreign was also made in a reply to the Facebook post.

“That’s scandalous, sharing around pictures of people saying they’re child snatchers with zero proof,” one commentator said. “I could take a picture of anyone and put that as the caption. Why would people share it with zero knowledge of its accuracy, pure propaganda.”

In response, another user wrote: “Aw the poor refugee. I wonder if you would be saying that if he tried taking your child.”

But there is no evidence that the supposed attempted abduction occurred.

Gardaí told The Journal said that there was no matching incident reported in Cahir on either 14 or 15 May.

Cahir has four county councillors in its Local Electoral Area: Máirín McGrath (Ind), Andy Moloney (Ind), Marie Murphy (FG), Micheál Anglim (FF).

The Journal contacted each of these councillors, either by email or telephone. Not one had heard of any such attempted abduction, nor a “community group” response to it.

The claim is part of a surge in baseless accusations about attempted child abductions by foreign-nationals which, as in this case, are widely spread online despite not being reported to the Gardaí.

The Journal has previously debunked baseless claims of attempted child abductions by non-white people in Cork and Dundalk and Enniscorthy, as well as warnings over Asian men approaching children in Sligo that Gardaí called. “fake news”. 

It is frequently claimed in anti-migrant groups that mainstream media organisations do not publish stories on migrants committing crime, often to justify their belief that migrants are often criminals, in spite of available evidence.

These commentators say the media is effectively covering it up on behalf of the state.

The opposite has been the case; Irish media organisations successfully sued last September to remove reporting restrictions over an attempted abduction of a child where the accused, who later pled guilty, was an Indian student.

However, in this case, there appears to be no such crime to report.

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