A grandmother has told how her life has been made hell after she was wrongly labelled as a drug dealer by the shadowy ‘Anti Drug Movement’.
The republican group, known as ADM, is being led by Waterford man Ciaran Kelly who has been claiming to be a community activist willing to take on drugs dealers.
Kelly originally, from Helvick near Dungarvan, fled to the US over a decade ago when facing charges for assaulting a man.
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He recently returned from the US after the charges were dropped and started ADM, recruiting a number of republicans into the group.
He has been naming and picturing alleged dealers online and warning people to get out of the drugs trade.
Among those targeted are serious dealers including well-known Dublin thug Mark ‘the Guinea Pig’ Desmond, who is working with convicted drug dealer Barry Young in Sligo. Several other people have been “named and shamed” online by Kelly.
However, not all those in his sights are big-time drugs dealers or even dealers at all, a Sunday World investigation can reveal.
One woman whose details were posted online is innocent grandmother Cathy Swales, who Kelly falsely described as the “oldest drug dealer in Dungarvan”.
Since being named online, she has received horrific abuse from republicans. Supporters of Kelly wrote vile comments, including: “Skanky bitch needs putting down.”
Another republican based in the north wrote the word “bullet” under her picture. And disturbingly Kelly also branded the gran as a Garda informer, potentially placing her life in even further danger.
Kelly, who has previously gone on radio to say he would happily pass information about drugs dealers on to gardai, wrote a message to Mrs Swales and her daughter saying: “I know you both are lowlife rats for the Gardai.”
Mrs Swales said Kelly posted her details after she confronted him about putting her daughter’s life in danger. Kelly secretly recorded the young woman giving him information on drugs dealers – and then emailed the tape to the men she named.
“He came into the town parading, doing marches saying he wanted everybody to stand up to the bullies and thugs that were the drug dealers of the time. He told everyone to talk to him and name them.” Kelly was also offering a €10,000 reward to anyone who had information on the tragic death of his 15-year-old son, Wayne, who was found dead in the water in Dungarvan in December 2005.
The death was officially ruled as death by misadventure at the time but gardai reopened the investigation six months ago and Ciaran Kelly insists his son was murdered because he would not sell pills for local drugs gangs.
Mrs Swales’s daughter was living in England when Wayne died but she passed on information she claimed to have heard about the death to Kelly in October last year.
Kelly secretly recorded the conversation in which the woman claimed to have information that Wayne had been assaulted and thrown into the water. She also named other alleged drugs dealers in the town.
On the recording, Cathy Swales’s daughter can be heard saying she’d be dead if it ever got out that she had been talking to Kelly.
However, Mrs Swales said: “He was recording every bit of it and he emailed it to the dealers of Dungarvan. When we confronted Kelly he admitted he released the recording. He tried to defend himself by claiming Mrs Swales’ daughter later took back what she said on the tape about his son’s death.
“We never pass on any information we get from anyone. That situation was a whole different ball game,” he said when confronted by the Sunday World.
Bizarrely, Ciaran Kelly yesterday claimed on his Facebook page that he had refused a request for an interview by this paper.
Yesterday he posted on his page: “The Sunday World is going to write more sh*t tomorrow. They asked five of us to give them a story but we refused.”
He had in fact happily talked to us for 40 minutes just two hours earlier in a taped conversation.
When the recordings of Mrs Swales’s daughter got out, she had to leave the town in fear of her life.
Mrs Swales said: “People said she was going to be killed. Myself and my husband drove her around until 5am. “We were in other counties driving around just trying to keep her safe. We got her into a safe home she could stay in for a while. She was okay there for a time but eventually she had to return home because she wasn’t able to stay in the place where she was forever.
“She came home and boarded the front of the house as much as she could. We put in cameras but she was still targeted. A rock with the word ‘rat’ written on it was thrown through a window of a bedroom where her baby daughter sleeps.”
Gardai were contacted about the matter and Mrs Swales contacted Kelly over exposing his daughter to the threats.
“I said to him, ‘I’m not afraid of you’. He seems to target women on their own. I told him I’m not a single person and I have a partner.”
It was after this that Kelly put Mrs Swales’s picture online and falsely labelled her a drugs dealer.
“After this I told him I wasn’t afraid of him and wouldn’t back down. That was it then. I heard no more from Ciaran Kelly.”
Mrs Swales contacted gardai about the matter but she says they told her they could do nothing about it even though associates of Kelly were calling for her to be shot.
“The guards told me he had freedom of speech. But he’s walked away from the damage he’s done. I have to keep my daughter and two grandchildren safe. He doesn’t care.
“My daughter is being harassed everywhere she goes. She can’t even go to the park with her kids. If she drives somewhere people will shout and scream at her as she goes past. “Her oldest boy is seven. He’s only home from hospital last night. He was vomiting. The doctors say they think it’s worry that has him sick.”
Mrs Swales said since Kelly returned he has caused havoc in Dungarvan. “He came into the town and turned it upside down.
“He marched in clear view of my window trying to intimidate me with these two men dressed in IRA-type army clothes.
“They had armed guards coming down to Dungarvan to keep the town quiet. His house was raided.
“He has half of Dungarvan up online, even people who have nothing to do with what happened to his son. This man needs to be stopped.” Kelly said his only aim is to get justice for his son’s death and to stop drug dealers.
“There was a lot of pressure put on drug dealers in Dungarvan and a lot of stuff is after being cleaned up in the town because of us,” he said.
