Death of British 'troll' sparks debate over Internet bile
Death of British 'troll' sparks debate over Internet bile
AFP By Ruth Holmes
16 hours ago
London (AFP) - The death of a British woman accused of a
vicious campaign of online abuse against the parents of missing girl Madeleine
McCann has ignited debate over the growing scourge of Internet
"trolls".
Brenda Leyland was found dead in a hotel room earlier
this month after being confronted by Sky News over her alleged trolling of Kate
and Gerry McCann, whose three-year-old daughter went missing in Portugal in
2007.
An investigation is ongoing, but has found no evidence of
foul play or third party involvement.
Using the Twitter handle @Sweepyface the 63-year-old
reportedly posted thousands of hate-filled messages about the couple.
Her name figured on an 80-page dossier compiled by
members of the public cataloguing alleged abuse directed at the couple and
their two other children from a long list of Internet users, which is currently
being investigated by the police.
It is a trend that has been replicated the world over
against high-profile figures.
Zelda Williams, the daughter of US actor Robin Williams,
recently quit Twitter after Internet trolls posted fake photos claiming to be
her dead father.
Former model Charlotte Dawson, who was found dead at her
Sydney apartment in February after battling depression, had been subjected to a
torrent of abuse on Twitter.
- Global challenges -
"Every country is facing these challenges,"
said British lawyer Mark Stephens.
"What they are doing is meeting the challenges in
slightly different ways but ultimately very similar balances are being
struck."
The media lawyer said he had seen "a significant
upswing" in online bullying cases.
But criminal prosecution, said Stephens, should be
reserved for the most extreme cases.
"It is only a very small minority who are fixated,
who take it to the extreme -- people who are borderline certifiable," he
argued.
Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has instructed
lawyers that messages sent via social media could be a criminal offence if they
contain "credible threats of violence" or target an individual in a
way that "may constitute harassment or stalking".
"Grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or false"
messages could also amount to a crime if a "public interest" case can
be made.
These guidelines, introduced against a background of
mounting confusion about such cases, have been shaped considerably by public
opinion, said Chris Holder, of London law firm Bristows.
"I think people are so fed up with reading things on
the Internet that you would not say to people's faces -- abusive messages to
people's children, Facebook posts that are completely obnoxious. The public
have demanded that the CPS do something about it," he said.
He acknowledges, however, that in the fast moving world
of the Internet any guidelines "could become irrelevant".
- Locking up 'trolls' -
Over the past decade the number of successful
prosecutions for communications offences has risen in Britain and custodial
sentences are not uncommon.
Last month a man was jailed for 18 weeks for what British
prosecutors described as "a campaign of hatred" against a female
lawmaker.
Peter Nunn, 33, from Bristol, southwest England,
bombarded Stella Creasy with abusive tweets after she supported a campaign by
feminist activist Caroline Criado-Perez to put the image of novelist Jane
Austen on the £10 note.
Nunn claimed he sent the messages, which included rape
threats, to exercise his right to freedom of speech and "satirise"
online trolling.
Barbora Bukovska, a senior director at ARTICLE 19, an
international organisation which promotes freedom of speech, said criminal
sanctions should be "the last resort".
Bukovska said she did not defend trolling and admitted
that some things posted online were "disgusting" but asked: "Do
we want to criminalise every social conduct that we find problematic?"
"If you prohibit any harsh or offensive communication
then it can be taken to the extreme," she said.
What drove the outpouring of bile about the McCanns by
Leyland, a church-going mother-of-two in a sleepy English village, remains a
mystery.
However, new research confirms what many victims already
know, that online trolls can be a sinister bunch.
A study by Canadian researchers cited in Psychology Today
linked trolling to sadism.
"Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the
distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun... and the Internet is their
playground!" it said.
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