Threats, harassment and intimate images online: a Garda matter, not a defamation claim

If you are in immediate danger, call 999 or 112 now.

Most of this site is about defamation: a false statement that injures your reputation, and the civil routes for dealing with it. This guide is about something different. Threats, campaigns of harassment and the sharing of intimate images are crimes. They are reported to An Garda Síochána, they are investigated by the Gardaí, and a defamation claim is the wrong tool for them. This guide explains why, what the offences are, how to report, and where to get the images taken down.

It is written for the person on the receiving end.

Why this is not a defamation question

Under s.6 of the Defamation Act 2009 a defamatory statement is one that tends to injure a person's reputation in the eyes of reasonable members of society. The remedy is civil: damages, a declaration, a correction, an order against repetition. Criminal libel was abolished by s.35 of the same Act. Nobody is arrested, charged or convicted for defamation in Ireland.

A threat to hurt you is not an attack on your reputation. A hundred messages a day are not a question of what reasonable people think of you. An intimate image shared without your consent may be entirely true, in the sense that it is a real image of you, and truth is a complete defence to defamation. None of these fit the civil tort, and treating them as if they did wastes time you may not have.

The Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act 2020, known as Coco's Law, exists for exactly these situations.

The offences under the 2020 Act

The Act creates offences covering:

• Harassment, including harassment carried out through messages, posts and other communications.
• Distributing an intimate image with intent to cause harm.
• Distributing an intimate image without intent to cause harm. The absence of intent to harm does not take the conduct outside the Act.
• Threatening messages.

The precise wording of each offence, and the penalties, are in the Act itself, linked in the sources. This guide does not paraphrase them further; the Gardaí and the courts apply them.

The figures show the Act in use. Department of Justice and Garda figures, reported by Irish Legal News in 2026, record over 1,860 harmful-communication incidents and more than 400 charges under the 2020 Act between January 2023 and February 2026.

What a defamation claim cannot do here

It is worth setting this out plainly, because people arrive at defamation sites after searching for help with harassment.

The last row matters: if the same person is also posting false statements about you, the defamation routes remain open, with their own one-year clock from the date the statement was first capable of being viewed. The lead guide on false posts covers those routes. But the threats, the harassment and the images go to the Gardaí first.

Reporting to the Gardaí

You can report at any Garda station, and An Garda Síochána's website at garda.ie sets out how to make contact. Bring what you have: the messages, the account details, the dates, and anything that identifies the person if you know them. You do not need to have identified the person to report; identifying them is part of what an investigation does, and the Gardaí do not depend on you obtaining a civil court order to find out who is behind an account.

Keep a note of the date you reported, the station, and any reference number you are given. If the conduct continues after you report, record the new incidents and tell the Gardaí; the pattern is part of what harassment means.

Hotline.ie for intimate images

Hotline.ie is Ireland's reporting service for illegal online content, and intimate images shared without consent are among the things it takes reports on. It works to have reported images removed, and it reports that 92% of reported intimate images were removed, a figure from its own reporting. Report to Hotline.ie as well as to the Gardaí; the two are not alternatives. Hotline.ie addresses the image being online, the Gardaí address the person who shared it.

Do not forward the image to anyone other than the Gardaí or Hotline.ie, including to friends for support or to the person who shared it in anger. Distribution of an intimate image is itself the conduct the 2020 Act addresses, and you want to be the person who stopped it spreading.

A notice to the platform

Under Article 16 of the Digital Services Act, every hosting service must offer an electronic route to notify it of illegal content. Your notice says why the content is illegal, gives its exact location, includes your name and email, and contains a good-faith statement. Coimisiún na Meán is Ireland's Digital Services Coordinator. This runs alongside, not instead of, the Garda report and the Hotline.ie report. The notice builder lays the notice out.

Coimisiún na Meán's individual complaints mechanism under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022 has no confirmed launch date. Its status is tracked at the rule-change tracker.

Capturing the evidence safely

Evidence matters in a criminal investigation as much as in a civil one, and the person responsible may delete messages or accounts once they know you have reported. Before that happens:

• Screenshot messages with the sender's name or handle, the date and time, and the thread around them.
• Screenshot the account profile and the URL.
• Keep a dated log of each incident, however small, in your own words.
• Save messages from anyone who tells you they saw the content.
• Do not reply, do not engage, and do not delete your own side of the conversation.
• For an intimate image, capture the location and the account, not the image itself if you can avoid it, and give the details to the Gardaí and Hotline.ie rather than keeping copies you do not need.

The evidence kit walks through this in order. Blocking the account is reasonable for your own peace; capture first, then block.

If the same person is also lying about you

Harassment and false statements often come together. Where a message is both threatening and contains a false accusation about you, both routes exist, and they do not conflict. The criminal route goes to the Gardaí. The civil route for the false statement has a one-year clock, runs through a written request, a solicitor's letter and the Circuit Court, and costs follow the event if it fails. The anonymous accounts guide and the WhatsApp group guide cover the civil side where it applies. Deal with your safety first.

Looking after yourself

Being targeted this way is frightening and isolating, and it is normal to feel that. Samaritans Ireland is available any time on 116 123, free, for anyone who needs to talk. Tell someone you trust what is happening, and let them help you keep the log and make the reports.

Where this leaves you

Threats, harassment and intimate images shared without consent are crimes under the 2020 Act, and the Gardaí are the route. Capture the evidence using the evidence kit, then report. If you are in danger now, call 999 or 112. Otherwise go to any Garda station or start at garda.ie. For an intimate image, report to Hotline.ie as well. If you need to talk to someone, Samaritans are on 116 123 at any hour.