MONICA LEECH, the communications consultant who won a record €1.872 million award in libel damages on Wednesday, said she had been spat at and assaulted after articles were published suggesting she had an affair with Martin Cullen.
Ms Leech said her libel case against Independent Newspapers was never about the money but rather “vindication”.
She said people “clearly, clearly believed that I was this dishonest floozie who was paid large sums of money to do nothing except have an affair with Minister Cullen”.
Ms Leech was speaking to radio interviewer Tom McGurk on the 4FM radio station yesterday.
“I have lived for the last 4½ years where I can’t go into a garage if I travel across Ireland without somebody recognising me, nudging,” she said.
“I’ve had my car vandalised. I’ve had stones thrown at me from a moving car. I’ve been spat at. I have been assaulted in restaurants. I have received horrible letters.”
She said she initially thought the earlier articles were “ridiculous”. “But unfortunately I hadn’t built in the fact that nobody was going to check or make a call or do any investigations,” she said.
She realised people might believe the allegations. “The reality is, if you are told day after day after day, you begin to sort of say ‘hang on here a second, there’s something going on here’,” she said. “It was the oldest, dirtiest little plot in the book,” she said. “Woman can only progress and produce any worthwhile work and secure any worthwhile work through some relationship with a man.”
Asked about her husband’s reaction to the reports, she said he never once asked if they were true because he knew they weren’t. “We’ve done too much living together at this stage and seen too much life together,” she said. The couple had lost a son and John had been very ill after contracting MRSA. “I would never betray that man. I’d walk through walls. I’d walk on fire ,” she said.
Ms Leech said it was a huge decision to take legal action and the family could have lost everything if she lost the case. “But I actually feel very very strongly that the only thing you take with you when you leave this world is your good name,” she said.
“I would not meet my parents in heaven with that stain on my name and I wouldn’t hand that on to my sons as well.”
She became emotional as she spoke about her late parents.
She said Martin Cullen felt dreadful that she and her husband had been dragged into the controversy because of her work for his department. “And it was very much out of his control.”
Ms Leech said she felt very lucky to have had her day in court. “So many people don’t make it. And I feel so blessed that I was allowed to have my day,” she said.
