Stella O’Malley, a well-known gender critical therapist and director of Genspect, has brought a defamation case against the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (IACP) for claims made in a recent issue of the IACP journal. In a specially themed edition on LGBTQ+ issues, Leonie O’Dowd made the following claims:
“Groups such as SEGM, consulted by the Cass Review, and Genspect – both categorised by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as “hate groups” for their anti-trans stances (Reed, 2024) – advocate that no medical treatment should be available to transgender people until age 25” (2024, 23).
Stella O’Malley and Genspect are challenging statements made by O’Dowd as being defamatory and causing them reputational damage. While the war of words around gender issues has been noted in the past for its fiery rhetoric and the equation of verbal critique with actual harm, this is a new development in the fast-changing terrain of gender litigation.
Defamation in Ireland is covered by the Defamation Act 2009, and is currently being updated in a new 2024 Act. Defamation consists of a statement made which could reasonably be seen as damaging one’s reputation. Defences in law include the statement being true, at least in part, or made with the legal defence of privilege, as by a Teachta Dála, a member of the Irish Parliament, or via a professional duty to communicate the information. Defamation can be resolved via an apology, offer of amends, correction, injunction, or payment of damages (Citizens Information, 2024).
Southern Poverty Law Centre claims
The claim that Genspect is a ‘hate group’ references the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) in the US as its source. The SCLC provides lists of organisations falling into this category, but seems to lack any clear criteria for inclusion, other than “opposition to LGBTQ+ rights or support of homophobia, heterosexism and/or cisnormativity”. Using this rather broad criterion, the SPLC not only includes Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), but also the American College of Pediatricians, for its aim of “protecting the biological integrity of children against transgender ideology” (ACP, 2025).
However, the SPLC has come badly unstuck in the past in compiling such broad-based lists of allegedly deviant organisations. In 2018, the SPLC paid out $3 million in compensation, for a defamatory claim that a leader of the Quilliam Foundation was an anti-Muslim extremist (Thiessen, 2018). So quoting the SCLC might well suggest a need for carrying out very careful due diligence, in the elementary task of checking that all referenced sources are completely sound and trustworthy.
Discussing autogynephilia
Another part of O’Dowd’s article refers to O’Malley’s discussion of autogynephilia, namely sexual arousal linked to cross-dressing. This is referenced to an earlier online article by Leveille:
“A psychotherapist and founder of Genspect, Stella O’Malley was recorded at a meeting saying: “There’s a thing called autogynephilia [PJ: AGP]. It’s really, really problematic in the world. So we’ve got this huge problem now,” and comparing AGP to paedophilia. She spoke about working with teenagers she diagnoses as autogynephilic, and queried whether it is “porn induced” (Leveille, 2022)” (2024, 25).
However, the ‘leaked audio’ seems to show O’Malley asking a series of open-ended questions, along the lines of:
[SOM] “…how should we manage the issue of AGPs in society? Where should they go? How should we manage them? This is the thing that I’d really love to get out of this conversation. How should that be managed in society?” (Leveille, 2022).
Leveille concludes with a number of claims against O’Malley:
“These combined approaches that Stella O’Malley uses puts trans communities around the world at serious risk. …At this point there can be no further doubt that projects or groups she leads or is affiliated with are avenues for the elimination of trans people in society via social and therapeutic control” (Leveille, 2022).
Leveille’s rhetorical claims seem to equate professional therapeutic discourse with creating ‘serious risk’ to people identifying as trans, as if an open-ended discussion can directly cause harm to identifiable third parties on a global scale.
Therapy and defamation cases
One possible outcome for this case would be for an out of court settlement to be reached by the parties involved here, presumably involving a retraction, an apology to Stella O’Malley and Genspect, and a payment of financial compensation. Defamation cases are notoriously expensive and tricky to fight in court, and are often limited to those with deep pockets. However, there is a surprising history of successful cases involving therapists under UK law, if not Irish law.
My own research suggests a number of such cases (Jenkins, 2007: 31-33). Katalin Blanc accepted damages of £10,000, following an interview with her former husband, the chef Raymond Blanc in The Observer, which was held to have made a number of statements damaging to her reputation as a psychotherapist (Guardian, 26/4/1997). Richard Wilmot-Smith, QC, and his wife, Jenny, a psychic healer, were awarded £350,000 damages by the Daily Telegraph, after an article in 1995, ‘The dark side of the New Age’, about a ‘a case of alternative therapy that left a happy family in tatters’ (Guardian, 19/3/1997). Paul McKenna, a well-known hypnotist, won a libel case against the Daily Mirror, for an article alleging that his first PhD, from an American university, was worthless (Guardian, 29/7/2006).
Probably the best-known therapy defamation case is that of a former psychoanalyst, Jeffrey Masson, who brought a libel case in 1994 for $11 million against a journalist, Janet Malcolm, for an interview In The New Yorker, in which she apparently used the disparaging term ‘intellectual gigolo’. The case lasted a staggering eleven years, before eventually being decided in her favour. Malcolm’s supporting evidence was in the form of a typed transcript of her interview notes, which had unfortunately gone missing. Ironically, the original notebook recording her interview with Masson, was later found by her two-year old grand-daughter in their summer house bookcase, just ten months after the case had been successfully concluded in her favour (Malcolm, 1997).
Conclusion
Legal action for defamation is a blunt instrument, but perhaps a necessary one where therapists’ rights to free speech are characterised as constituting hate speech. The message going out across social media needs to be a strongly cautionary one. In publishing allegations of therapists causing serious risk or harm to others, always be sure to double- and treble-check your original sources…
References
American College of Pediatricians (2025) Mission and vision. https://acpeds.org/
Citizens Information (2024) The law on defamation in Ireland. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/justice/civil-law/law-on-defamation
Jenkins, P. (2007) Counselling, psychotherapy and the law. Second edition. Sage: London.
Leveille, L. (2022) Leaked audio confirms Genspect director as anti-trans conversion therapist targeting youth. Health Liberation Now. April 2nd. https://healthliberationnow.com/2022/04/02/leaked-audio-confirms-genspectdirector-as-anti-trans-conversion-therapist-targetingyouth
Malcolm, J. (1997) In the Freud Archives. Papermac: London.
O’Dowd, L. (2024) Providing therapeutic space to transgender and non-binary clients. Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy. 24(4): 21-27. https://iacp.ie/files/UserFiles/IJCP/00951%20IJCP%20Q4-21-%20Full.pdf
Thiessen, M. (2018) The Southern Poverty Law Center has lost all credibility. Washington Post.June 22nd. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-southern-poverty-law-center-has-lost-all-credibility/2018/06/21/22ab7d60-756d-11e8-9780-b1dd6a09b549_story.html
Reed, E. (2024) SPLC Designates Genspect, SEGM As Anti-LGBTQ Hate Groups. Erin in the Morning. June 5th. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/splc-designates-genspect-segm-as
Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) (2024) Anti LGBTQ. https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/anti-lgbtq
By Peter Jenkins, counsellor, supervisor, trainer and researcher in the UK. He has been a member of both the BACP Professional Conduct Committee and the UKCP Ethics Committee. He has published a number of books on legal aspects of therapy, including Professional Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy: Ethics and the Law (Sage, 2017). https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/author/peter-jenkins
Peter is also a member of Thoughtful Therapists. His critique of the Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy was described as ‘instrumental’ in persuading the UKCP Board of the case for leaving the MOU in 2024.
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