Irish LGBT city councilor resigns after allegations of abusing teen boy

The first openly LGBT city councilor in Galway, Ireland has resigned amidst allegations that he groomed and sexually abused a teenage boy online.

On January 1, a young man shared two videos on Twitter accusing Galway city councilor Owen Hanley of grooming and abusing him starting when he was just 16 years old. 

"I am a victim of sexual abuse, catfishing, and underage grooming. Owen Hanley did this to me. Mr. Hanley operated a fake Twitter account under the name Irish Jock, using the handle @leftmuscle," the victim who goes by the name Jaimie Mac Giolla Bháin on Twitter said in the video. "He posed as a teenager and reached out to me on Twitter, knowing who I was from previous engagements in the Social Democrats."

Bháin went on to describe being coaxed into sending explicit images of himself over “a long period,” starting just after he turned 16 and going up to February 2022.

The young man says that after he discovered Hanley was behind the Twitter account, he confronted the city councilor and presented him with the evidence. Hanley denied the allegations but immediately afterwards, all traces of the accounts Bháin says were operated by the LGBT activist were erased from Twitter, and his profile pictures were removed.

The videos received a large amount of attention in Ireland and as a result, on January 4, Hanley announced his resignation from his position representing Galway City East for the Irish Social Democrats.

In a statement posted on Facebook, Hanley said: "In the past 48 hours certain allegations have been made about me. These are very serious matters and will obviously take a considerable length of time to be investigated fully by the appropriate authorities."

"In these circumstances I believe that the correct thing for me to do is to resign my members of Galway City Council," he continued.

According to Reduxx, Hanley was first elected to city council in 2019, and made history not only as the "first openly LGBT+ councillor" to be elected but also the youngest.

In 2019, the Galway Daily did a profile on the young activist, who at the time said he wanted to be a "role model" for members of the LGBT community.

Shortly after he was elected, Hanley stepped up to defend doctors attempting to perform sex changes on children by attacking an Irish whistleblower who was attempting to warn Ireland’s health authorities about the dangers of the soon-to-be-closed Tavistock gender clinic.

Consultant endocrinologist Dónal O’Shea had voiced his concerns that the Tavistock was "unsafe" for young people and had stressed the need for mental health support for adolescents who believe themselves to be transgender.

Reduxx reports that Hanley responded by calling O’Shea "the barrier for trans people seeking the healthcare that they need to improve their lives" and called his claims "absolute unscientific nonsense."

"[O’Shea is] ignoring international best practice, clearly acting as a gatekeeper against people’s best wishes, mistrusting and misunderstanding trans people. Prof. O’Shea should not be in charge of whether or not people can access trans healthcare," Hanley tweeted at the time.

However, last year an independent review of England’s Tavistock clinic agreed with O’Shea, finding that the gender service was not a "safe or viable option" for young people. The clinic was ordered to close and will be replaced by regional centers better able to cope with the complex mental health needs of these children and adolescents, just as O’Shea had recommended.