This is a story I’m writing, I suppose as some form of closure. On my terms, not his. I’ve sought to hold my harasser accountable via civil and criminal means, but unfortunately to no avail. For me, this is the best way to hold him accountable for his choices, for the impact it had on me and most importantly to ensure I’m the last person he does this to.
This long story all stems from my advocacy for womens rugby and criticism of the IRFU. Over time, some people have reacted quite drastically when I call out misogyny in sport. This is, by far, the most drastic of those reactions.
It’s time to name and shame.
All I write here is backed up by in-depth personal, and garda, investigation. It includes online investigation, gathering of meta-data and my own experiences. All the images were or are publicly available information, aside from the email I sent.
The tea is being spilled…
A year ago today, I discovered someone had set up two accounts on X (formally and then known as Twitter) with the sole intention of abusing and harassing me and my family. I’ll never forget the moment I received a message from a prominent rugby personality asking “Am I in trouble?” with a screenshot that showed an account that shared the same name as mine had added him to a Twitter list called “Bastards”.
I’m not sure I can begin to describe the visceral feeling when you realise that disagreement over a hobby and passion of yours has spilled over into a personal and targeted abuse. I genuinely felt sick. I’m usually one to think ‘ah it’s just some cranky troll’ but following several heated weeks online and noting the effort that went in to this particular type of abuse, I knew it wasn’t going to be minor.
And I was unfortunately right…
The accounts
So, unbeknownst to me, the harassment actually began two days earlier, when the first account @ailbhebosca was set up at 8.27pm. The account used images of me he had found online and used my first name.
This is the account that had been adding people to a “Bastards” list. I quickly reported and asked others to do so too. To my surprise, this account was very quickly suspended (temporarily). Much to my relief also, as he had posted 42 times in 48 hours. Obsessive stuff. I thought at the time that this would be it, but I was very wrong. The obsessive nature of it would only become more and more apparent.
The first account in my name last tweeted on April 26th 2023 at 5.09pm and sometime after this a temporary ban was put in place. He quickly set up another account, @ailbhe_fan that same day at 7.49pm. Despite repeated attempts to have this one banned, Twitter never took action. Clearly he was determined to continue the abuse, it wasn’t just a laugh or a sick joke. He followed up these two personal accounts with ones that impersonated my rugby account.
On April 28th he set up irishnomens account, an account that lasted until May 2nd when that received a permanent ban after 6 days of harassment. On May 4th he then set up lrishwomens (note the craft use of a lower case ‘L’ at the start that looks like an ‘I’).
Across the four accounts there was a total of 1,118 tweets, all to target, harass and defame me. A total of 75 days of abuse, that lead to a mental health breakdown, a depressive episode and months of an anxiety disorder that I was medicated for. I’ve no shame in sharing that, this is what his choices lead to.
The content
Essentially the narrative from these accounts sought to portray me as a man hating sex obsessed alcoholic narcissistic lesbian. I can assure you, I’m none of the above. Except the lesbian part, obvs.
Targeting high-profile accounts
He used my name and image to send abusive things to high profile people such as Brian O’Driscoll, Gordan D’Arcy, Stephen Ferris, he even offered me and my wife up for sex to Ronan O’Gara. No really:
Sexual Harassment and fat shaming
He repeatedly sought to sexually harass myself and my wife, which had a great impact on us both.
Suggestions of criminality
There even were suggestions that I was sexually abused, that I planned criminal acts, that I called for violence against others or that I was a sexual predator.
Tagging employers
He tagged my wife’s company Twitter accounts
He tagged my employer
12 weeks of this abuse. 1,118 tweets. An average of just under 15 tweets a day. Relentless abuse, that eventually wore me down. I couldn’t escape it. My employer was made aware as they were tagged. People would find it and share it with me, trying to be helpful, but drawing my attention to it again and again and again. It became consuming and overwhelming.
I posted on Twitter, begging him to stop, sharing some of what I was going through, and his reaction was to mock me.
It got to a point that if you googled my full name, one of the twitter accounts was the top result, alongside pictures of my family, including my children.
Impact on my mental health
Around the last week of June 2023, I began to have panic attacks and feelings of depression. I felt my self-esteem had taken a considerable knock and I had become incredibly anxious. This worsened over the course of a fortnight. I began to become overwhelmed in social situations, was suffering from decreased mood, low-motivation, poor appetite, and was crying uncontrollably. I had a number of panic attacks where I couldn’t breathe, I felt my diaphragm and back spasm, not unlike when you get badly winded, and I felt a feeling of impending doom and heart palpitations.
The months of harassment, particularly the sexualised and body shaming abuse, coupled with mentions of my home, and the suggestion I was being watched or stalked had a huge impact on my mental wellbeing. I began avoiding socialisation where possible initially, and then forcing myself into those situations in an attempt to just ‘get over it’.
This was impacting my work, my family and my life as a whole. On July 7th I attended my GP, who informed me I was experiencing a depressive episode and anxiety, a response to trauma. She explained that it is similar to PTSD. My GP prescribed me with medication to manage the panic attacks and advised me to seek counselling and to try meditation to help manage the anxiety.
I engaged with my company EAP program and requested help with counselling. I am still in counselling a year later.
Identifying the account owners
For weeks I agonised over who was behind these four accounts and the endless stream of abuse. I had my suspicions, particularly people who had shown hostility towards me in the weeks preceding these accounts being set up, but I needed proof. And boy did I find it! Now here’s the real tea.
The person behind all this is a man called Simon Elkinson aka @OnsideRecruiter
An Irish guy living in suburban London. A Terenure College man, a former professional player with London Irish and semi-professional with Duncannon RFC. He had previously worked with the Irish exiles in the UK as an S&C.
I’m sure you’re now thinking, how do I know this, how can I be sure? Let me walk you through the detective journey I took.
Eureka
The Eureka moment was when in June 2023 he went on holidays. He decided to document this from the @ailbhe_fan account, pretending to be me on holidays. I kept an eye on the posts, hoping for him to make a mistake, and he eventually did.
A friend contacted me to tell me she recognised the location of one of the photos he shared. The Nuru Gallery in Mallorca. Initially I dismissed it, thinking it was some stock photo or something he had found online. But a day or two later, he shared this photo:
This one struck me as not appearing to be a stock photo. The knee on the foreground, and most importantly, his reflection in the glass balistrade. I knew this one was real. I wracked my brain about how this could be of use to me. Google maps. I figured that the photo gave enough detail, with the beach, the large building on the left, the port in the distance and the elevated balcony, I decided to scour google maps, and in particular, areas of Mallorca. I wasn’t hopeful, but I thought it was worth a try. Given the position of the sun over the water in the right of the photo, I figured this was a picture taken from the south coast, maybe evening time, so I knew where to start.
And I found this:
I thought it looked convincing. So I zoomed in.
There it was, the balcony, the big building and port in the background, the beach and even a large tree from his photo. It all aligned perfectly. Even the tiling pattern on the balcony matched. So I googled the hotel, Pure Salt Port Adriano and looked at their images.
And I found an image on their own website of the exact balcony he took the picture from. And just like that, I knew I was on to him.
I decided to dig deeper. I had long suspected it was Elkinson involved, but I had no proof. I looked for evidence on social media and generally online to see if any of this could be linked back to him. Sure enough, I found it. Port Adriano is in an area of Mallorca called Calviá, and beside it is a beach called El Toro (The bull).
Facebook kindly informed me that Simon Elkinson’s father lives there:
And his mother had shared a post about an annual festival held there:
Garda Investigation
At this point I knew I had enough to go to the Gardaí. I wasn’t convinced they would take this seriously, but to my surprise, they did. It is a likely breach of the Harassment, Harmful Communications Act 2020, Section 4.
This offence carries with it up to two years in prison, and up to €5,000 in fines on Summary Conviction (district court conviction) and possibly up to €75,000 in circuit court.
Almost immediately the Gardaí contacted Twitter to get a preservation order put on all the accounts. This meant that even if he deleted the accounts, they coudn’t be purged from their databases. They sought warrants for information. They discovered that Elkinson had set up gmail accounts to link to the Twitter accounts, in order to protect his identity. They then sent warrants to Google, at which point they got IP addresses from both Google and Twitter. Using those IP addresses, they were able to determine the approximate location of the poster.
Business
Now, a little bit of background on Simon Elkinson, before I go on.
Simon owns his own company, Picadilly One, in London, of which he is the sole director. Not everyone may know this, but typically company information is publically available via Company House (in the UK), similar to the CRO in Ireland. Here, I was able to determine the company address. In November 2016 he registered his company at a residential address, his home address. I know, not the smartest thing for someone to do when they link their company name to their Twitter account, which they then use to stalk and harass someone.
I’m not going to share his personal address here. It’s publicly available info, but I suggest you don’t go searching for it. He doesn’t need to be stalked and you don’t need to sink to his level.
I then discovered he had changed his company address during the campaign of abuse to try hide his identity and avoid being held accountable. He had posted on May 1st that he was getting “heat for this account” and that he needed to “shut it down as club positions and professional careers are at risk”. On May 9th he submitted a new company address to mitigate that very risk to his professional career, and he protected the tweets from that account for a short period. But there’s always receipts.
These are the lengths he went to, to protect himself while he put in huge time and effort to break me.
Pinging Locations
Anyway, back to those IP addresses. Now we know he lives in Acton, has a business address down the road in Richmond. So where did the Gardaí discover the IP addresses were pinging to. Yep, you know it! Richmond, Ealing, Acton and Brentford.
One even pinged to Wembley, a little further afield. An anomely? Not really, he posted from his personal account that he was there on June 4th. The lucky duck got to go to Beyonce!
My actions
Having gone to the Gardaí, they had exhausted all measures they could in Ireland. They sent off something called a MAR (Mutual Assistance Request) to the MET in London to seek their help in further investigating the matter and engaging with Elkinson directly.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, eight months later and two reports, the MET have taken no action.
But I did.
After discovering his identity, I posted pictures from google street view of a pub near his house. As a result, there was a gap in the abuse of 15 days. Silence. He now knew I knew. But after those 15 days he went back at it, doubling down. He obviously felt safe enough. I later posted a picture of a takeway nearby. Another few days of silence. Every time he felt accountability was closing in, he went silent. No more so than when I contacted him via his private email.
On July 8th 2023, the day after I went to my GP, in the midst of a mental breakdown, I emailed him directly. It was out of pure desperation.
I didn’t think this would work, but it did. I emailed him at 8.51am, the last tweet of 1,118 he had made at a little over an hour earlier at 7.43am. It ended immediately. The abuse was over. Five days later he deleted the remaining accounts. To date, I have not seen any further abuse or harassment from him.
His response felt like an admission. Like he was saying ‘ok, it’s me, you got me, I’ll stop’. It was probably more like fear, because for the first time I had come to him, via a private communication method. He knew I had him and he decided to delete it all in the hope it wouldn’t harm him personally, like he had harmed me.
In July 2023 I contacted a solicitor. Upon review of my evidence, the solicitor was convinced I had a case for personal injury and harassment. Over the course of the next two months the solicitor compiled my evidence and sent a letter to Elkinson at both his home and business addresses. Elkinson wisely chose to ignore these. It takes integrity to face the consequences of your behaviour.
The fact that Elkinson is in another state massively complicates the legal process. It would make it incredibly expensive for me to pursue him, without him choosing to engage with the process. We’re talking probably upwards of €100,000 to sue him and have any judgement enforced overseas. I’m already out of pocket close to €3,000 because of all this.
All attempts to engage with him have been ignored. It doesn’t suprise me that an abusive man that went to huge lengths to protect his company would run scared from the consequences of his actions.
So here they are, his consequences and my closure. I have told my story, shared his name and the entire process that identified him. And I haven’t even come close to sharing all of it, nor the information I have on who helped him.
To Simon
You left me with little choice. You refused to engage with the formal civil process. All I ever wanted was an acknowledgment of what you did and an apology. You chose to abuse and harass me and my wife for months on end. I choose to tell my story.
I did nothing to you. I advocated for something, and you took exception to that because you recognised yourself in what I was critical of. That’s on you.
You’re not a “good human”. You say you’re a man of “integrity”, but objectively, you are not. You’re an abusive bully.
The last word I have for you is this. I agree with you. There must be accountability for what is said by anonymous accounts.
And you can’t act with impugnity just because you think you’re hidden.
I figured you out, I have all the receipts and I get to end this on my terms. Who’s the good detective now?
Ailbhe
Irish Women’s Rugby Supporters Club
I can tell you that I knew the bloke in question from school. So you're well-worded post is officially "doing the rounds" - I hope it has a serious impact onto the lads work and real life - as there are clearly issues there
I am very sorry that this happened to you and more so that you were failed by the system to either protect you or go after this nasty piece of work. This is just horrendous but sadly far too common an occurrence.
I've learned so much from following your account and looking forward to my first in person 6 nation game (men's or women's) tomorrow against Scotland.
Thank you for sharing everything.