Former RTE star reveals how he tracked down his daughter's cyberbully
Classic Hits host Colm Hayes said he was “protecting his daughter” Holly after he found out she was receiving messages from a vile troll online
Former RTÉ 2FM star Colm Hayes has revealed he hired a top IT expert to track down his daughter’s online bully.
The Classic Hits host said he was “protecting his daughter” Holly after he found out she was receiving messages from a vile troll online.
Holly, who is 25 years old, was just a teenager at the time and eventually plucked up the courage to tell her parents about the cyberbullying.
READ MORE: Colm Hayes says RTE is no longer fit for purpose and broadcaster needs to 'adapt or die'
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Colm immediately engaged with an IT expert to track the perpetrator’s IP address. After tracking, their search exposed that the origin of the trolling and messages was actually the home of a friend of the teenager. Colm went to the house to tell the supposed friend's parents what had been going on.
“There was a million excuses, like ‘It was my friend on my computer’. But the point is we were able to stop it," he told the Sunday Independent.
"The parents were shocked. They are lovely people and they didn’t know it was happening. I was just protecting my daughter. Pull the mask off. It’s empowering as a parent and it’s empowering as a child. As soon as we identified the person, you pull off their balaclava and they are gone into the night.”
The Dubliner also shared his thoughts of presenters not being allowed to earn more at RTÉ than the Director General, Kevin Bakhurst.
He said: “It’s just gone silly. They’re reacting to public opinion.” When asked if it was the right thing to do, he answered: “I don’t know, let’s see if it works.”
Colm, who previously worked with 2FM boss Dan Healy, admitted there were rows when they worked together, but that there was also mutual respect. Colm revealed Dan was a “good operator” but added that he is “running around in circles” now.
“Dan knows what he wants and goes for it. He doesn’t suffer fools. He will stand up in an argument. You will have stand-up arguments with him. He knows what he wants.”
Opening up on if he ever had any rows with Dan, he answered: “On programming policies, yeah. But professional ones.
“In fairness to Dan, he would respect me for the years I brought, and I respected him because he was the programme director of 2FM, but I might not have agreed with what was being done.”
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