The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) has upheld part of a complaint against a phone-in show on Dublin’s 98FM radio station.

The complaint concerned a segment on the Dublin Talks show on August 25, 2016, with a woman who told her story about her decision to terminate a pregnancy following a diagnosis of a fatal foetal abnormality.

She said that the production staff, who contacted her while she was on holiday the day before the broadcast, assured her that it would be a 10-minute chat with the presenter just to relate her story.

98FM denied this saying that she was told that it was a caller-based show and there would be other callers involved.

However, during the show the contributions from callers included one from a man called Jimmy, who she said subjected her to “horrific abuse and cross-examination”.

She said that Jimmy “cross-examined” her on her child’s burial and asked whether or not they had a Christian service in a church or in private and queried where the burial had taken place.

She also claimed that the presenter allowed Jimmy to make “wild accusations”, meaning she had to defend herself from “outright hate and despicable allegations”.

These included him saying that she had the “audacity to take that child home”, “It’s killing an innocent child”, “Abortion is murder – thou shalt not kill”, and “Is this just a Walter Mitty pro-abortion story?”

The radio station claim the presenter intervened, saying that to suggest such a thing was “outrageous”.

The woman said she would never have agreed to take part had they told her that there would have been people ringing the programme to comment and give opinions.

She believes she was “not treated fairly and honestly by the programme” and therefore believes they did not have her informed consent.

According to the complainant, the presenter finally took control of the discussion but decided to end her participation in the programme, while Jimmy was kept on-air and was allowed to comment on the story of another caller who shared her story of having been raped and who had decided to terminate the subsequent pregnancy.

She believes that this was “the basest form of entertainment poorly dressed up as a current affairs discussion”, and allowing this man access to her on the airwaves was like “treating her, her family, her child and their personal tragedy as a freak show”.

The BAI Committee said it did not have sufficient grounds to decide on whether she was given enough information about her contribution and whether her consent to participate was fully informed.

Therefore, the committee did not believe there were grounds to uphold her complaint, but they did rule that the programme’s presenter “failed to take timely corrective action” when the caller caused offence to the woman.

The committee found that it was evident from feedback during the programme that this caller and his remarks were “causing clear offence to the audience” and by leaving this caller on-air while ending the call with the complainant, the programme makers had “failed to deal fairly with the complainant”. For this reason, the complaint was upheld in part.