A Nigerian architect and online business owner who says he was assaulted and falsely accused of rape in what he says was a racist attack in Dublin city centre has spoken out about his experience.
Campaigners who monitor anti-migrant and racists groups say the attack on Onyema Udeze is an example of a number of recent incidents involving non-Irish and non-white people, in which baseless allegations against them are amplified following incidents by the later circulation of footage online.
Mr Udeze was visiting Dublin last year to speak at a construction industry event at the RDS when he was attacked by a number of people on O’Connell Street, resulting in injuries to his face and head.
In the moments prior to the attack at a bus stop, Mr Udeze said several individuals claimed he had attempted to rape a nearby white pregnant woman.
He said the publication of a video online showing the moments after the incident in which similar allegations were repeated resulted in him being caught up in social media storm, something he says drove him to speak out to clear his name.
One post which received nearly 50,000 views captioned the video as “Immigrant following pregnant woman is held by locals until gardai get there and arrest him.”
Others contained similar references, branding him a rapist or a threat to women.
The incident
Mr Udeze arrived in Ireland on a ‘C’ visa, which allowed him to remain in the country for up to 90 days. After his RDS speaking commitment was completed in early September, he held meetings with several companies and attended a number of other industry events.
On 9 October he was heading back to his accommodation in Dublin 1 when he met an African woman at a bus stop on Upper O’Connell Street, and they began to discuss life in Ireland.
While he was seated at the bus stop, he says, two Irish women complained that he was sitting too close to them.
“They mentioned something about our conversation disturbing them. They said I should not sit close to them. [And] went to call some guys over to tell them to force me to move away from them,” Mr Udeze said.
The woman Mr Udeze had been speaking to had left the area around this point, and a number of men then approached.
“I tried to explain to them but before I could say one thing they took it as a fight, and began to punch me and beat me up,” he said.
In the midst of the incident, Mr Udeze says his phone went missing.
Two members of An Garda Síochána arrived as the scuffle ended. The video footage later circulated online begins as the gards arrive, and shows a dazed Mr Udeze with a bloodied face demanding a white Irish man return his phone to him. At the start of the video, both men are being physically held beside each other by Gardaí.
A man recording the footage points into Mr Udeze’s face and accuses him of rape. He then turns the camera towards people standing nearby, saying one of them was victim of Mr Udeze. The woman shown appears to have not been involved in the incident.
The other man being held by the two gards alongside Mr Udeze repeatedly shouts “you are a rapist, a bleedin’ rapist,” inches from Mr Udeze’s face.
Mr Udeze responds with “F**k you, give me my phone.” At that point, someone in the background says that Mr Udeze “needs to be arrested.”
Describing he feelings at that time, Mr Udeze said “I’m a foreigner in Dublin… the phone I use to move around with maps, to make payments [was taken]. I knew that if I didn’t get back my phone, it’s going to be big trouble for me.”
In the video, the two gardaí briefly separate Mr Udeze and the Irish man, at which point the Irish man steps out of the grip of the Garda members, and is encouraged to leave the area by other people nearby.
Mr Udeze can then be heard saying “give me my phone” to the man, as the two gardaí then try to place Mr Udeze in handcuffs.
In the footage, as Mr Udeze is being detained by the gardaí on the street, a voice from behind the camera can be heard laughing, then saying “no one has your phone you little rapist. We’ll see you on these streets again pal, I promise you that. We don’t give a shit about the garda either.”
Another voice is heard threatening Mr Udeze, saying, “send a few boys up to [a Garda Station]. When he gets out, he’s getting got.”
Mr Udeze said he was then brought by members of An Garda Síochána to a nearby station, a decision he takes issue with.
“[The attackers] all left and they took me to the station without trying to understand what was actually going on.”
Prime Time asked Stephen Moore, a retired garda who served for 20 years at Pearse Street Garda Station in Dublin city centre to examine the footage. He says that such incidents are challenging for garda members, who often have to make split-second decisions, to deal with.
“Sometimes what’s in front of you initially doesn’t tell the full story. Each call is very different, and you very much have to think on your feet. The decisions that you make are based on what you see in front of you,” Mr Moore said.
“If your only evidence is the witnesses that are there you have to make your judgement there and then based on what you’ve been told,” he added.
Mr Moore, who is also the founder of Out of the Blue Training Ltd, says that when no immediate evidence like CCTV is available, gardaí have to rely on what they’re told at the scene.
Mr Udeze’s position is that he was unfairly detained, and the other individuals involved in the incident should not have been allowed to leave the scene.
When Prime Time asked An Garda Síochána about the allegations of phone theft from Mr Udeze, it said “there were no reports or evidence presented at the scene to indicate that the individual’s phone was stolen.”
Release from station
Mr Udeze said he was held for a number of hours in a cell, before being released around 3am.
He said he attended hospital for his head injuries as a precaution afterwards, and recalls signing a document on his release from the Garda station. He later learned the document was an adult caution.
He said he understood he was required to sign the document in order to be permitted to leave the station at that time.
“I told them that I didn’t know where I am. I don’t know how to get back to my hotel because typically I use maps to get my location… in the middle of the night. I never retrieved that phone,” Mr Udeze said.
After being released, Mr Udeze said he wandered around Dublin until he eventually found his accommodation.
Reputational concerns
When he later managed to connect to the internet via his laptop, he realised his nightmare was far from over, as he soon came across the video of the incident on social media.
“I went onto Twitter, and I started seeing some posts from the incident. I began to see all of the narratives. They said I was trying to rape a pregnant woman. I was seeing all manner of posts and rubbish,” Mr Udeze told Prime Time.
Asked whether they obtained any reason or reports to investigate Mr Udeze in relation to any of the acts he was publicly accused of, An Garda Síochána said “no other matters were investigated at the time.”
As well as his background in architecture, Mr Udeze is also a content creator and web designer. He says his online reputation is extremely important to his work. In a bid to correct the record, he has posted about the incident on his personal LinkedIn profile.
“Some people started to reach out to me. Some people were even kind enough to give me a phone, so I could reactivate my Apple wallet and things, to survive.”
In his LinkedIn post, Mr Udeze said the situation he found himself in was, “a gross injustice, racism and abuse of my fundamental rights.”
“I was brutalised. I had to go to the hospital. They took me through an X-ray scan just to make sure that I didn’t have any cuts or internal bleeding or any fracture or any major wounds,” Mr Udeze said.
Prior to leaving Ireland, Mr Udeze contacted a number of organisations to report what had happened to him during his visit to Ireland.
He also began the process of lodging a complaint with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) about his arrest.
Now back home in Nigeria, he says he still wants to see his complaint pursued.
“I still want to get justice, which is why I was writing letters to all the authorities. My fundamental problem with Ireland is the security system,” Mr Udeze said.
He said he has since seen videos posted online related to similar incidents, including others in which non-white or non-Irish people are attacked after being publicly accused of rape or harming children.
“I watch videos on YouTube where the guy literally walks on the street and harasses people and ask them, ‘what brought you to Ireland?’ They are making money out of this,” Mr Udeze said.
A similar pattern
The way claims about Mr Udeze were amplified and spread online fits into a trend in how racist and anti-migrant networks operate, according to Niamh McDonald of Hope and Courage Collective.
“For years we’ve seen a direct link between the disinformation that happens online and the generation of fear and increasing division of violence in our communities, whether that be directed towards people seeking asylum, people from maybe the Muslim community and also the LGBTQI community,” Ms McDonald told Prime Time.
In Ireland, the people behind circulating and amplifying such content are often a small but highly-networked minority, Ms McDonald said.
“Information, disinformation, violence is shared very, very fast and moves at lightning speed across these things,” she added.
“The disinformation is designed to cause fear of the other, who the far right don’t see as Irish, with the intent to create division and cause violence in our communities.”
Mr Udeze says that despite receiving recent invitations to partake in further business events in Ireland, he has no intention of returning.
“I could have attended an event. I could have come again. But why should I?” he said.
