Fiosrú, which investigates complaints made against gardaí, conducted itself in an “unacceptable” manner when the first complaint was made about serial abuser and now former garda Paul Moody, the head of the Garda watchdog body, Emily Logan, has said.Moody was not properly investigated at the time and then went on subject another woman to years of abuse. Last week he was jailed for four years and nine months for his crimes against his first victim.That woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said in her victim impact statement at the Circuit Criminal Court that her complaint in 2017 to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc), now Fiosrú, should have been acted on.She added Moody could have been stopped at that stage, before going on to abuse his second victim, Nicola Hanney, who was his subsequent partner.When he was jailed last week, Moody had already served the three-year sentence imposed on him for his abuse of Hanney, who waived her right to anonymity.When the first victim went to Gsoc in 2017 and made a complaint, the investigation was discontinued with no outcome. It was stopped in March 2023, some nine months after Moody was jailed for his abuse of his second known victim.His first victim said last week she was met with “a wall of silence” from Gsoc, describing her treatment as “neglect” and “a betrayal of trust” which left Moody free to go on and form a relationship with Hanney and abuse her.Logan said that although she has been in her position since April 2025, when she “looked back and parsed that investigation” she believed the outcome was wrong. She understood the victim must have felt “very let down by that experience”.“I want to be clear and say what happened to [Moody’s first victim] ... was wholly unacceptable. It was unacceptable, there’s no question about that,” she told RTÉ Radio 1’s News at One.[ Investigation into complaints against ex-garda Paul Moody faced delays, ombudsman saysOpens in new window ]Logan said “the victim is absolutely right” in her assertion that Moody could have been stopped and his second victim, Hanney, spared her ordeal. She added “the experience of not being listened to or not being responded to” was not acceptable.She had also written to the first victim and extended an invitation to meet to discuss how her complaint had been mishandled by Gsoc, which was reconstituted as Fiosrú last year in a shake-up of the Garda oversight agencies.Logan said new steps were being taken to ensure such cases are better managed and fully investigated, with a particular emphasis on carefully examining Fiosrú’s first engagement with a complainant in cases of gender-based violence.“It’s not unusual in these circumstances for victims to make a complaint and then retract, that’s very, very common,” she said. Gender violence expert Noeline Blackwell had also been appointed to offer advice and to be Fiosrú’s “external eye”.Blackwell, former head of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, would also critique Fiosrú’s work as a new specialist unit was put in place to respond to complaints made about Garda members that had a gender-based or sexual dimension. Victim-support workers would also be seconded from Women’s Aid in an effort to “mitigate the risk” around a complainant making an initial allegation and then withdrawing it. This often happened because they had been traumatised after having been abused or attacked.