It rarely starts as an emergency: a few messages, then more, then the posts, then the contact with your employer, the appearances, the sense of being pursued. Harassment is a pattern crime against peace of mind — and the civil courts can restrain it, on evidence that proves the pattern.
What Courts Can Restrain
Persistent campaigns of communication, publication and conduct can ground injunctive relief restraining further contact and posting, alongside the claims the conduct supports — and the injunction’s logic fits harassment precisely: damages after the fact don’t repair a life lived under siege, and the wrong renews itself with every message. What the court needs is the pattern demonstrated rather than asserted: the incident log — every contact and post, dated, with screenshots preserved properly before accounts delete; the escalation visible in the timeline; the refusals communicated and ignored. Two doors matter alongside the civil one: where conduct is criminal — threats, stalking — An Garda Síochána belongs in the picture, alongside the civil route rather than instead of it; and where the harasser is a former partner or family member, the family law protective-order regime is usually the right tool — this firm’s family practice handles that terrain, and the first call sorts which door fits.
The First Steps That Matter
Start the log today — retrospectively reconstructed patterns persuade less than contemporaneous records, and the discipline itself restores a measure of control. Preserve before blocking or reporting — the screenshots with dates and URLs come first, because content deleted is evidence lost. Don’t engage — responses feed campaigns and complicate the record. And take advice early: the strong solicitor’s letter ends some campaigns outright, the anonymous ones meet the identification machinery, and where restraint is needed, the earlier the application, the stronger it stands.
Full terrain, both chairs: the Defamation & Harassment page carries the complete layered response — and the accused chair too, because allegations of harassment also deserve realistic advice before the reflexive next message becomes someone’s best exhibit.
A pattern forming — or already formed? 01 5827148. The log starts today either way.