Noah's mum frozen out of his Instagram account after his death, inquest hears

A family has told an inquest they were not responsible for preventing Noah Donohoe's mother from accessing her son's Instagram account following his death.

A mother and two children denied having anything to do with the memorialisation of Noah Donohoe's Instagram account a day after his body was found in June 2020.

The intervention meant the account was frozen and could not be accessed by Noah's mother.

The inquest has heard that Fiona Donohoe did not know who sent the memorialisation request to Meta at the time, it was done without her consent and caused her anguish and distress.

According to Instagram, memorialised profiles are a place to remember someone's life after they've died and means no one can log in.

The coroner's court eventually succeeded in getting details from Meta, which operates Instagram, about the email account used to request the memorialisation.

It was linked to the family who appeared at the inquest on Thursday.

The coroner, Mr Justice Rooney, granted a request for anonymity from the mother and her two children.

All three, who gave evidence individually, appeared behind a curtain and they were only visible to the coroner, the jury, legal teams, and Fiona Donohoe.

One member of the family was a pupil at St Malachy's College in North Belfast, the same school Noah attended.

The email address, submitted to the inquest by Meta, was slightly different to the family's actual email.

It included an incorrect number and ended in .con instead of .com.

A teenage boy, whose name was provided to the inquest by Meta, told the hearing that he was in a different school year to Noah and was too young at the time to understand the process of memorialisation.

When asked if he knew Noah, he replied: "Not at all."

He said he only realised who the missing boy was after seeing his face on posters and had never had any interaction with him.

The teenager was asked if he had any explanation for the use of his name on the Instagram memorialisation request. He said he had "no idea" that it happened until he was made aware of it recently.

He also said he never had any discussions with anyone about Noah's death.

He also explained that he and his sister used the family email for social media and games, adding: "I was only a child."

The teenager also said if he knew who it did "I promise I would say".

The boy's sister, who is also in her late teens, told the inquest that she never made any contact with Meta.

She also said she did not know Noah and only became aware of him during the publicity surrounding his disappearance.

The witness also said she made a follower request to Noah's account following his disappearance and the inquest heard that hundreds of others made similar requests at the time.

She explained she made the request because she was around the same age as Noah and wanted to "keep updated" about his case and share any information that might help in the search for Noah.

She said she didn't know anything about the memorialisation request until her family was contacted by the coroner's office in February 2026.

She added: "I can't even describe how shocking it was."

"Anything our family can do, anything, we're here to help."

She also said her Instagram account was hacked previously and her brother's was hacked "a few times".

She was asked how she would react if someone said it was her who requested the memorialisation of Noah's account and she replied: "It wasn't."

She also said if it was herself or her brother who made the request to Meta at the time she would tell the inquest.

The mother of the teenage children also gave evidence and confirmed that she never had any dealings with or knowledge of Noah prior to his disappearance.

After the boy's disappearance, the woman said she had been praying for Noah.

The witness momentarily broke down as she told the inquest that she "didn't have any idea" about the memorialisation request using her family's email address.

She said her children "were as surprised as I was" when they were made aware of what had happened earlier this year.

The woman was asked by Mr Justice Rooney if Meta made any contact with her family at the time to try to verify if it was them who made the memorialisation request.

She replied: "Never, no."

The inquest was told by a barrister for Fiona Donohoe about the impact of the memorialisation of Noah's Instagram account on his mother, and how she was "locked out" of access to important information about her son's life before his death.