A SCHOOLTEACHER WHO accused gardaí of ‘turning a blind eye’ to various issues in Co Waterford has been dealt a five-year prison sentence for a campaign of ‘targeted harassment’ against the three men.

Waterford Circuit Criminal Court heard that Lee Hutchinson had wrongly accused three gardaí serving a number of the county’s fishing villages of a range of deeds through a series of “abusive and vexatious” anonymous letters and phone calls.

Judge Eugene O’Kelly said the harassment was “persistent and consistent” over a number of years, and included the teacher sending anonymous letters to garda stations, the partners of the gardaí, their work colleagues, the Garda Commissioner and a school attended by one of their children.

In one period, letters were sent in the wake of the “violent” death of a man in Dunmore East in 2018, Hutchinson told the gardaí they would have “no future” and urged one to keep his family members away from the area.

Hutchinson, a 40-year-old survivor of Bessborough Mother and Baby Home and with an address at Coxtown West, Dunmore East, Co Waterford, pleaded guilty to three offences under section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act.

Among the documents used to match Hutchinson’s handwriting to those of the anonymous letters was a form he had filled out to begin tracing his birth parents.

The court heard that the offending took place between May 2014 and September 2018.

He described the allegations as “vile, vexatious” and “extremely hurtful” to the gardaí involved, with the offences aggravated because Hutchinson had made them anonymously.

In one letter, addressed to former Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan, the letter writer posed as the unnamed wife of a “retired and highly respected GP”.

This was an attempt to suggest that the letter came from a “person of standing”, Judge O’Kelly said.

The court heard that the letter informed the commissioner of a “tip off” and a “blind eye” being provided to particular individuals in the community, including in relation to garda checkpoints, such as one on Holy Thursday night.

Victim impacts

In their separate victim impact statements, gardaí Declan Kerr, Adrian Cullinane and Seamus Fitzgerald outlined the impact the “saga” had taken on them.

Fitzgerald said he suffered “deep distress” at the letters along with anonymous phone calls, while Kerr said the letters and contacts with family members had “very sinister undertones” which he believed were “all done to inflict as much as stress as possible”.

In his victim impact statement, Cullinane said he came to question “what this man was capable of doing” and recalled being informed by fellow gardaí that another anonymous phone call had been received. “Your friend was ringing again, saying that you’re corrupt and not doing your job properly,” Cullinane recalled colleagues telling him.

He added that members of the public had witnessed the same behaviour, with one taxi driver friend, who Cullinane said was unable to come to court, had declined to take Hutchinson as a customer due to the barrage against the guard.

Cullinane further outlined his shock and hurt after feeling that one line manager had responded in a manner that seemed to “suggest that the contents were factual” rather than false.

Inspector Siobhan Keating and prosecuting barrister Caroline Latham told the court that one letter, accusing gardaí of turning a blind eye to various local issues, was forwarded to a local superintendent, Chris Delaney.

A referral was then made to the Garda Ombudsman.

Prior to this, the named gardaí had also taken the step of contacting Delaney to inform them of correspondence they had received accusing them of “corruption”.

Keating said that internal inquiries by gardaí and by GSOC ultimately found the complaint was unfounded.

She outlined that gardaí had caught the accused after using CCTV to trace him going to the post office to send one of the letters.

Forensic analysis and technical expertise was later used to “strongly” match Hutchinson to a number of the letters.

‘Outlandish’ letters

Referring to other letters, the judge said there were “pages of outlandish allegations” including of “sexual impropriety and corruption”.

Judge O’Kelly noted that, as per details in a psychological report carried out with Hutchinson prior to his sentencing, the 40-year-old may agree that he is “legally guilty” but does not “feel guilty” over what happened.

“It is very difficult to judge whether Mr Hutchinson feels any remorse,” he said.

The judge added that during discussions with the psychologist, he admitted that he “shouldn’t have sent any correspondence to any of those gardaí without concrete proof or evidence to back the claims up”.

In another part of their discussion, the court heard that Hutchinson said: “People have have a legal and moral obligation to flag these things.”

Judge O’Kelly said the “campaign” had “very traumatically affected” the lives of the guards involved, and that by contacting the school and partner of one guard, the teacher was attempting to “systematically dismantle and destroy every facet” of one guard’s life.

A further aggravating factor was that Hutchinson had “clearly researched” aspects of the the victims’ lives. This ranged from where their wives worked, to where their children went to school.

He ordered Hutchinson not to make any contact, for a period of three years, with the three gardaí, their immediate family or their employers, unless he is “a victim of crime himself”.

He also should not approach within 200m the residences of the named gardaí for a period of 10 years.

Defending

Hutchinson did not speak during the hearing but Garreth Hayden, his barrister, pointed to how his client was asked by his psychologist to complete various sentences ahead of the court sitting.

When asked what was the most violent thing he ever did, the teacher told the doctor it was “to harass those people”.

Another unfinished sentence, “If I had one wish it would be…”, saw Hutchinson respond: “Not to have done this.”

He said he was concerned about the strain on his own family and also told his doctor of his fears for his job, as he his contract as a history, geography and religion teacher was recently not renewed.

“I am afraid of having no future after this,” Hutchinson had said.

Hayden told the court there was an irony in that Hutchinson’s own communications with gardaí, such as on 5 August 2018 in light of the violent death of a man in the community, he had threatened them that they “would have no future”.

“But it’s Mr Hutchinson who was telling his doctor that he would have no future after this,” Hayden said.

He said that “feelings were running high in Dunmore East” at the time due to the death of a local man in days prior, for which another man is currently serving a prison sentence.

He added that Hutchinson struggled to fit in and always felt he was an outsider due to his status as an adopted person. Hayden said that he suffered from the death of his mother while young and that he lives with his adopted father.

He noted that his doctor felt that the teacher “impresses as a concerned citizen and a valuable members of the community in which he lives”, and that through “these outrageous things he may have seen himself as some kind of defender of the community in his own warped way”.

“Clearly that wasn’t correct because he was making attacks on the people who are there to protect,” the barrister said. 

Sentencing

The judge said Hutchinson lived a “lonely, unhappy life” and, combined with an alcohol problem, had sought to “transfer his personal problems” to the gardaí.

While his justification for doing this was to “put himself in the role of a concerned citizen”, the judge the teacher was “far removed from that of a bona fide” concerned member of the community. 

Adding that society must condemn any attack on frontline members of the public service, the judge said found that the offending is at higher end of the scale.

He said the appropriate sentence is eight years, but took into mitigation Hutchinson’s no previous convictions and family background to reduce the sentence to six years.

He suspended the final year of this sentence for two years post-release to leave Hutchinson with a final jail time of five years.

Before being led away to be placed in custody, Hutchinson was granted legal aid to secure senior counsel in preparation of an appeal.