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Threatened, insulted, insulted - women journalists are attacked all over the world because of their work.
Patricia Devlin, Journalist
»My name is Patricia Devlin and I'm a journalist based in Northern Ireland.
In recent years I have received several death threats because of my work.
'I cover crime in Northern Ireland, mostly paramilitary gangs. That had a big impact on me. It really changed the way I work, it changed the way I see myself as a journalist. And unfortunately, all this has led to my having to leave the newspapers. And I think that's the hardest part of all: your intimidation won. We're going, we're going.«
Devlin breaks off the interview with SPIEGEL.
The threats she has been exposed to for years are having an effect.
Devlin now works as a freelance reporter.
That was not always so.
She spent most of her career covering the aftermath of the Northern Ireland conflict as a staff local reporter.
Among other things, Devlin reported on the victims of the so-called
“
Provisional Irish Republican Army
”
, or IRA for short.
She went where crime, drug dealing, murders happened.
Until she became a target herself.
Patricia Devlin, Journalist
“The first time I received a threat for doing my job, it wasn't actually directed at me.
It was for my newborn son who was just three months old.
I received a rape threat on my personal Facebook profile.
The sender threatened to rape my newborn son.
The threat was sent by a neo-Nazi group that had ties to loyalist paramilitaries in the past.”
According to a study by the United Nations, 73 percent of all female journalists worldwide are threatened because of their work.
Just like Patricia Devlin.
She felt compelled to quit her job at a local newspaper and started her own podcast.
Even if she is no longer on the streets of East Belfast doing research as often, she continues to report on crime: Victims, dropouts and former paramilitaries have their say here, among others.
Excerpt from »No Edit Podcast with Patricia Devlin - Crucified: Paul Reid's Story«
»
Belfast, May 1996: A teenager is dragged into a car by four masked men.
He is beaten before being driven at high speed into an alley in the nearby Republican heartland of Ballymurphy.
He is taken out of the car, his arms and legs tied with duct tape before his attackers hang him upside down from a wooden fence.
What happens next is known as caning.
Raids regularly carried out by paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, ostensibly to keep their communities in order.”
She hasn't received any threats via her social media channels for 12 months now, but hostilities on the open street still happen.
And so, with every research, the fear continues.
In an interview with SPIEGEL, she is always on the alert, she doesn't want to be recognized in East Belfast.
Patricia Devlin, journalist
»Let's go!
Go, go, get out of here.«
Patricia Devlin, Journalist
“My male colleagues who have written stories similar to mine on similar subjects and have been threatened in the past have never been threatened with rape of their children.
They have never been abused in a misogynist way by calling them prostitutes, their appearance is not criticized.
To be honest, I felt that as a female journalist I was criticized more than my male colleagues.
It was so intense and especially on social media it was mean and vicious in a way that I haven't experienced with my male colleagues and of course didn't want to experience either.
I felt like there was definitely a misogynistic element.”
This video about Patricia Devlin is part of the
"
Storykillers
"
project, an international investigation by the investigative network
"
Forbidden Storries" in which SPIEGEL is involved.
