A Possible Answer to Why CyberStalkers & Cyberharassers Do It?

EOPC are not doctors, mental health professionals, police or lawyers. This is posted merely as informational. Perhaps this is why serial stalkers and harassers do it. Many cyberpaths and internet trolls have a desperate need to control others and control what is on the net. One only need ask - Why? It is up to you to make up your own mind.



Personality Disorders in the Paranoid-Narcissistic Spectrum

by Dr. T. O'Connor, Dept of Justice Studies, NC Wesleyan College

There are ten different personality disorders, and in this lecture, the spectrum approach is followed which allows for mixed types, and it should be noted the spectrum approach is controversial and not the way most clinical psychologists are trained. The spectrum approach to classification transcends the DSM (Diagnostic Statistical Manual) method, and is essentially a heuristic approach designed for theory development, not validation.

No single set of symptoms are required for inclusion in a spectrum. Rather, the sameness or similarity of comorbidity characteristics and the underlying causal processes are looked at. Spectra can be constructed that link Axis I and Axis II disorders, psychotic disorders and personality disorders, affective disorders and sexual disorders, and so on. In most cases, the subject's personality has not disintegrated to the point where there is any one identifiable clinical syndrome. A spectrum disorder may exist in muted form or as a mirror-image of a diagnosed or undiagnosed mental illness. We are concerned in this lecture with personality types that primarily exhibit the common characteristic of aggression.

Paranoia occurs in two forms: (1) the "bad me" paranoid; and (2) the "poor me" paranoid. Paranoia affects .5 to 2.5% of the population.

The "bad me" type tends to be more rageful and sadistic than the other type. Paranoia in all its forms tends to be organized around aggression, from sadomasochistic violence to lingering hostile mood. Paranoia is an insidious disease which develops slowly as a secondary personality characteristic, fuses into a more or less dysfunctional coping style, and may or may not become the dominant pattern. Psychologists suspect that the cause of paranoia is found in the mothering experience, in particular, the breast-feeding experience. Successfully breast-fed infants develop the capacity to feel supported and a tolerance for frustration. Unsuccessfully breast-fed infants (those who viewed the experience as "bad" in some way) develop a distinct inability to experience self-satisfaction, tolerance, and positive relationships. Internalization of the bad experience leads to the initiation of provocative and confirmatory interactions with others, mostly through splitting (seeing things as black-white, good-bad, weak-strong) and projection (accusing others of having the disowned aspects of your self).

A full-blown "bad me" paranoid perceives threats in everything other people do, often exploding in manic, counterphobic episodes. A full-blown "poor me" type views the world as basically unfair and persecutory, countering their anticipation of discomfort with either antisocial behavior or grandiosity.

Delusions: One the cardinal symptoms of paranoia and other disorders, most notably schizophrenia. Delusions are faulty interpretation of reality that cannot be shaken despite clear evidence to the contrary.

Delusions can be classified as:

• Bizarre -- belief that others can hear your thoughts, others are inserting thoughts, or your thoughts, feelings, and impulses are controlled by an external force
• Referential -- belief that certain gestures, comments, song lyrics, or passages in printed material are specifically intended for you or reference you in some way
• Grandiose -- belief that you are an extremely important person, an invaluable member of society, and possess or make some special unrecognized talent or contribution
• Persecution -- belief that others are out to get you, are plotting against you, foiling your every move, or making you feel guilty or ashamed
• Bodily -- belief in some kind of undiagnosed deteriorative medical condition such as dissolving of spinal cord, rotting or deterioration of skin, organs, or brain
• Religious -- belief that you are an important religious figure, in contact with deities, or serving some special theological purpose in the world.

Narcissism is a somewhat less severe form of psychopathy.

It manifests aggressive, paranoid, and borderline characteristics, but more commonly appears in the form of envy, greed, power lust, an extensively rationalized sense of entitlement, and a pathological grandiose self. Unlike psychopaths, narcissists can experience loyalty and guilt; but like psychopaths, narcissists lack empathy or caring for others, viewing people as "playthings" to be used.

Female narcissists tend to be the kind that "sleep" their way to the top; male narcissists tend to get ahead by becoming involved in massive power struggles. Psychologists suspect that the cause of narcissism is severe mental or physical pain in childhood at the hands of a powerful, idealized mother-father figure. Inconsistent parental attitudes on aggression and self-assertion as well as childhood experiences of being valued for specific, precocious talents seem to be the prime determinants. They never learned who to identify with -- the aggressor or victim, and they developed a pragmatic philosophy of siding with winners, regardless of who was in the right or wrong. In fact, they believe that the "good" is usually changeable and fickle while "bad" is stable and predictable. They live life by idealizing those who satisfy their narcissistic needs and systematically devaluing and denigrating those who do not. Underneath their superficial charm, they feel they have a right to control, manipulate, exploit, and be cruel to others.

There's not much research proving narcissists are more prone to violence than any other group, and no one has a clue as to how widespread this particular personality disorder is - estimates range between 3 and 15% of the population, with 5-7% being a fair estimate. Being a narcissist is close to being an alcoholic but MUCH more so. Alcoholism is impulsive behavior. Narcissists have this plus hundreds of other problems. Narcissists frequently have uncontrollable behaviors, like rage which is an outcome of their grandiosity. Narcissists can rarely be cured, but side effects, associated disorders (such as OCD), pathological lying, and the paranoiac dimensions CAN be modified.


ANGER, WORRY, RAGE

Most Personality Disordered people are prone to anger. Their bottled-up anger is always sudden, raging, frightening and without apparent provocation by an outside agent. It would seem that people suffering from personality disorders are in a CONSTANT state of anger, which is effectively suppressed most of the time. It manifests itself only when the person's defenses are down, incapacitated, or adversely affected by circumstances, inner or external. In a nutshell, such people were usually unable to express anger at "forbidden" targets in their early, formative years (parents, in most cases). The anger, however, was a justified reaction to very real abuse or mistreatment. The patient was, therefore, left to nurture a sense of profound injustice and frustrated rage. Healthy people experience anger, but as a transitory state.

• Personality disordered anger is always acute and permanently present.
• Healthy anger has an external inducing agent (a reason), and is directed at another (coherence).
• Pathological anger is neither coherent, nor externally induced. It emanates from the inside and is diffuse, directed at the "world" or "injustice" in general.

The Personality Disordered are afraid to show that they are angry to meaningful others because they are afraid to lose them. The Borderline Personality Disordered is terrified of being abandoned, the Narcissist needs his Narcissistic supply sources, the Paranoid - his persecutors and so on. These people prefer to direct their anger at people who are meaningless to them, people whose withdrawal will not constitute a threat to their precariously balanced personality. They will yell at a waitress, shout at a taxi driver, or explode at an underling. Alternatively, they will sulk, feel bored, drink or do drugs ? all forms of self-directed aggression. From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to suppress, they will have it out with the real source of their anger. They will rage and, generally, behave like lunatics. They will shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts, pronounceallegations and suspicions. These episodes will be followed by periods of sentimental sweetness and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the victim of the latest rage attack. Motivated by the mortal fear of being abandoned or ignored, the Personality Disordered will debase and demean himself to the point of provoking repulsion in the beholder. These pendulum-like emotional swings are common. Anger is the reaction to injustice (perceived injustice, it does not have to be real), to disagreements, to inconvenience.

Hostile expressions by the Personality Disordered are not constructive - they are destructive because they are diffuse, excessive, and unclear. They do not lash out at people in order to restore self-esteem, prestige, or a sense of power and control, but because they cannot help it and are in a self destructive and self-loathing mode. Their angry episodes contain few signals or warning signs. Their anger is primitive, maladaptive, and pent up.

The Personality Disordered also suffer from a cognitive deficit. They are unable to conceptualize, to design effective strategies and to execute them. They dedicate all their attention to the immediate and ignore the future consequences of their actions. In other words, their attention and information processing faculties are distorted, skewed in favor of the here and now, biased on both the intake and the output. Time is dilated for them - the present feels more protracted, "longer" than any future. Immediate facts and actions are judged more relevant and weighted more heavily than any remote aversive conditions. Anger impairs cognition. The angry person is a worried person.

The Personality Disordered is also excessively preoccupied with himself (solipsism). Worry and anger are the cornerstones of anxiety. The striking similarity between anger and personality disorders is the deterioration of the faculty of empathy. Angry people cannot empathize. Actually, "counter-empathy" develops. Recent provocative acts by others are judged to be more serious ? just by "virtue" of their chronological position. This is what distinguishes rage from anger.

Rage attacks in personality disorders are always incommensurate with the magnitude of the source. Anger is usually a reaction to an ACCUMULATION of aversive experiences, all enhancing each other in vicious feedback loops, many of them not directly related to the cause of the specific anger. The angry person may be reacting to stress, agitation, disturbance, drugs, violence or aggression witnessed by him, to social or to national conflict, to elation and even to sexual excitation.


EVIL, DESTRUCTIVENESS, ADDICTION

The psychopathic argument with reality that is present in all personality disorders is a narcissistic pleasure of lying and deception. They don't lie to everybody, only those people (good-bad, strong-weak, females, strangers, authority figures) that they have differentiated as worthwhile or not. Each dichotomous split and pattern of lying is indicative of a different personality disorder, but the most common pattern is a desire to dupe or deceive those perceived as "good" people, to rob them of their "goodness", as it were, and to further deprive them of any moral right to feel victimized. Identification is always with the aggressor or with evil -- as powerful, bad, and ideal. In many cases, there are fantasies or interests about animal predators or archetypal evil demigods.

An inverted conscience means that the superego idealizes evil. Things that would normally produce guilt, insecurity, and anticipation of punishment in ordinary people produce feelings of self-esteem, security, and self-cohesion in the personality disordered. They only experience a sense of being true to their real self when they are persecuting others, inducing pain and suffering, and further experiencing feedback about how much malicious destruction they have done. Full-blown psychopaths have the highest degree of inverted conscience, and sadists have the highest degree of need for feedback.

However, it's extremely rare to find a perfectly intact inverted conscience. Most of the personality disordered live with fragments of a normal superego. These guilt fragments are expressed in occasional self-defeating behaviors. Their self-destructiveness will probably never take the form of suicide or any devaluing of the importance of winning through aggression, but they may change their split between strong-weak attributions, present themselves for therapy, or seek out religious mysticism. More frequently, however, when confronted with a self-crisis, they will adopt new names (aliases) for themselves, thus making themselves their own parents.

Drugs and alcohol are used to repair their personalities especially when there is a problematic representation of self to others. The personality disordered are commonly addicted persons because the "cycle of addiction" perpetuates the extreme self-state needed to shore up their self-cohesion while at the same time undermining any adaptive integration of self with experience. All addicted persons experience cycles of self-state extremes. One of the extreme self-states will be the dominant organizer of experience. An alcohol-induced self-state, for example, will assist in lowering inhibitions and facilitating aggressive tendencies. A psychoactive drug-induced self-state may assist in fostering paranoid delusions. The most serious and sadistic crimes committed by such individuals will be when they are at the peak of their dominant extreme self-state. This means that they commit crime while intoxicated or shortly thereafter. Since they only "need" to drink or drug when there is a need for personality repair, it's unclear if they have a substance addition, a violence addiction, or a state of mind addiction.


PERSONALITY DISORDERS IN THIS SPECTRUM

Aggressive Style:

PARANOID:
Provocative, pre-emptive attack
Superego Development: Defective
Conscience: Retributive, vindicates self
Destructiveness: Vengeful

NARCISSISTIC:
Denigrating, demeaning to others
Superego: Immature
Conscience: Normal with Delusions
Destructiveness: Interpersonal Exploitation

ANTISOCIAL:
Rebellious, contemptible
Superego: Deviant
Conscience: Distorted
Destructiveness: Interpersonal and Expressive crime

PSYCHOPATHIC: Malicious, Predatory
Superego: Perverse
Conscience: Inverted
Destructiveness: Strategic Conquest and Domination

SADISTIC:
Sadism
Superego: Defective and Perverse
Conscience: Inverted
Superego Development: Defective and Perverse
Destructiveness: Proloinged Anguish and Suffering


THE LEARNING THEORY OF SERIAL MURDER

As an alternative to the idea that serial killers are driven by "fantasy", at least one criminologist (Hale) has proposed that they are driven by humiliation or embarrassment. They perceive the world as full of "attacks" or "challenges" that cannot go unanswered. This acute need to reassert power is drawn from early childhood experiences where the offender felt powerless to control events. This need, combined with an arrested social development which includes problems at demonstrating mastery and at social comparison, results in the use of a victim as an audience to "set things right." In this view, serial killers are seeking approval from their victims.

Like all people, even the personality disordered are motivated to seek the approval of others. For various reasons, however, they experience feelings of frustration at finding ways to conceptualize how they would go about obtaining this approval from others. They actually anticipate failure without even trying. This is because they perceive the original person who humiliated them as superior or more "powerful" than they are. They then seek out vulnerable and less threatening persons as victims, who become scapegoats for the person who initially thwarted their needs for approval.

The diagnosis of "malignant narcissism" may be more apt for serial killers than "antisocial personality disorder" because it better exemplifies the connotation of evil that hangs over this domain of personality. A malignant narcissist is someone who exhibits antisocial personality traits combined with unrestrained aggression, a more pathological than deviant conscience, a strong need for power and recognition, distrust of others, and certain elements of sadism. Kernberg says that malignant narcissism develops as a defense against feeling of inferiority and rejection.

All criminals tend to have problems understanding social norms. They are more self pre-occupied than concerned with obeying the law. Serial killers, like many criminals, are driven more by the expression of their internal needs than a rejection of external forces. To maintain this schedule of "conditioning one's conscience", two things are necessary: alienation and isolation. Fromm said that alienation can be handled by ritualized behavior. Isolation simply limits exposure to societal sources of social control.


PRINTED RESOURCES:
Aronson, T. (1989) "Paranoia and Narcissism" Psychiatric Review 76(3):329-51.
Brown, N. (1998) The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern. Westport, Ct: Praeger.
Ferreira, C. (2000) "Serial Killers - Victims of Compulsion or Masters of Control?" Ch. 15 in D. Fishbein (Ed.) The Science, Treatment, and Prevention of Antisocial Behaviors. Kingston: Civic Res. Inst.
Fromm, E. (1973) The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Hale, R. (1993) "The Application of Learning Theory to Serial Murder: Or You Too Can Become a Serial Killer" American J. of Criminal Justice 17:37-45.
Hale, R. (1994) "The Role of Humiliation and Embarrassment in Serial Murder" Psychology: A Journal of Human Behavior 31:17-23. Horowitz, M. (1994) "Cyclical Patterns of States of Mind" Amer. J. Psychiatry 151(12):1767-70.
Kernberg, O. (1992) Severe Personality Disorders. New Haven: Yale U. Pres.
Kernberg, O. (1993) Aggression in Personality Disorders and Perversions. New Haven: Yale U. Press.
Kirmayer, L. (1983) "Paranoia and Pronoia" Social Problems 32(2):170-79.
Lowen, A. (1997) Narcissism: Denial of the True Self. NY: Touchstone Books.
Millon, T. & R. Davis (1995) Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond. NY: Wiley & Sons.
Richards, H. (1998) "Evil Intent: Violence and Disorders of the Will" Pp. 69-94 in T. Millon et al. (Eds.) Psychopathy: Antisocial, Criminal, and Violent Behavior. NY: Guilford Press.
Ronningstam, E. (1998) Disorders of Narcissism. Washington DC: Amer. Psychiatric Press.

original article here

Hate & the Internet

Does the internet encourage insidious and bullying behaviour?

I remember the first time I logged into a chatroom. It was 1996, and I was using my mum's AOL account to mooch around the world wide web, which was still very much in its infancy. I was in that glorious, unrestricted period of life between college and reality, and the web seemed to offer splendid, unrestricted access to the outside world in a way that no generation had known before.

So it was with cocky confidence that I joined the "general" room as "Dan" (of undisclosed gender) and instantly discovered the thrill of anonymity. Behind my digital mask, I began a brief but satisfying tirade of mockery, contrariness and antisocial behaviour. Of course, compared with the stream of epithets that Xbox Live users encounter playing online, my efforts were pretty tame – I didn't question anyone's sexuality, make any racial slurs or say anything particularly negative about anyone's mother. But the sense of release I experienced in 10 minutes of childishness has remained at the back of my mind ever since I started studying the web; it helps define our behaviour online.

For some, this new technology not only facilitates, but actively encourages insidious and novel social ills. Blogs and forums are no-go zones for people who hope for rational conversation; cyberbullying has been blamed for several recent suicides; and white power, homophobic and jihadist organisations have colonised the web, preferring its potential to old-fashioned pamphleteering. It looks as if the web makes it possible for us to hate one another more easily, more efficiently and more effectively.

My mantra is that the web is an agnostic communication platform: it can do nothing to us except reflect who we are. However, as my own little descent into cyber-trollism attests, there are aspects of it that do encourage antisocial behaviour.

The biggie is anonymity, according to Dr Karen Douglas from the University of Kent, who studies the psychology of hatred online. We can log into a forum under a pseudonym, lob a hate bomb and then fade away into the digital ether. It's like playing a trick on Halloween; it's childish, it seems insignificant, and it's kinda fun. Unfortunately, such actions can have real-life consequences depending on who the hatred is directed at, how often it happens and whether there's support in place if the victim needs it.
But is anonymity alone the issue? Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus at Stanford University, has been studying why people do evil since the 60s, and he says that environmental social cues are equally as important. In his famous Stanford prison experiment in 1971, a random selection of psychologically stable subjects were transformed into brutal prison guards after being given mirrored sunglasses and uniforms and told to play the role.

To reindividuate anonymous members of online crowds, forums, blogs and news sites – including the Observer's – are increasingly asking commentators to register their real names before posting any material (even if they then do so using a pseudonym). It's believed that the forging of this simple link between the virtual and offline persona is why relatively few counter-normative attitudes are expressed on sites such as Facebook, where exposing yourself as racist can turn you into a social pariah. Unless, of course, your friends are racists too. And that's a more difficult problem to solve.

Data traffic indicates that, online, we are increasingly talking to people just like ourselves, relying on our friends' directions to navigate the web. It's ironic that, rather than opening us up to an ever-greater number of opinions and attitudes, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter may actually be narrowing our worldview, confirming what we already believe and reinforcing attitudes we hold already.

So what happens when we only communicate with people like ourselves, and the messages we share only reinforce our mutual hatred? It's a technique radical religious and racist organisations have always used to make sure their members conform, but now they're employing technological tools to create global communities of like-minded ideologues.

Groups such as Stormfront.org and GodHatesFags.com use the web for networking, self-promotion and recruitment. They give support and intellectual ammunition to existing members, rarely explicitly inciting violence. Thankfully, it appears that efforts to convince non-believers to convert to their cause are rarely successful – although we have yet to see the impact of their children's zones (with links to games, and alternative information for schoolwork, that reinforce their ideologies).

It's not all bad news, however. Just as the web is a powerful tool to get the message out, it's also a good vehicle to expose its flaws. The rampant opinions that dominate online life challenge users to be critical of the content they consume, and considerate in how they construct effective counter-arguments.

Online hatred is real, and it can have a very real effect. But we are in command of the technology; it's not in charge of us. And as for anonymity, back in 1996, even though I hid behind a false name, I didn't throw a hate bomb into that chatroom and run away; no, I was booted out. And frankly, my moment of humiliation was exactly what I deserved.

original article found here

MATCH.com Strikes Again - Woman Raped on First Date

A woman who was brutally beaten and raped on a first date with a man she met on Match.com has testified about how she faced additional humiliation from defense attorneys who tried to use her Google searches as evidence against her.

Jennifer Bennett was 23-years-old when she was attacked in the apartment of Thomas Bray, a 37-year-old anesthesiologist, and she decided to go public following the attack in hopes of encouraging other sexual assault victims to report their attacks.

Though she expected to be questioned by police and interrogated by Bray's prominent attorney, she did not expect that they would try to use her own Google searches against her in an attempt to diminish the seriousness of the attack.

According to The Oregonian, Bray's lawyers ordered Ms Bennett to turn over her Google searches because they wanted to show that around the time of the February 2011 attack, Ms Bennett searched for the definition of rape. Defense attorneys believed that this would help support Bray's story that their sexual was rough but consensual, and Ms Bennett regretted it after the fact so she was looking for a way to argue her way out of it.

Victims advocates, however, decried the move. Meg Garvin, director of the National Crime Victim Law Institute said 'it's subjecting them to re-victimization by the system'. The filing for the search results was the first of its kind in Oregon, and though the both the county judge ruled that the order was justified and the state supreme court ruled that too much time had passed to appeal, the district attorney did not comply with the order.

Google also refused to turn over their user’s information as protected by the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act unless she agreed, which she did not. In the end, Ms Bennett didn’t turn over her searches or her journals, but the sympathetic judge did not react with a contempt of court charge.‘I chose not to because I didn't think it was fair or correct,’ Ms Bennett told The Oregonian.

Instead of penalizing the victim, the jury sentenced Bray to spend the next 25 years in jail as he was found guilty of rape, sodomy, strangulation and assault.He was also facing charges that stem back to an alleged sexual assault of a prior girlfriend, but her claims were dismissed since the judge found them to be less valid because she continued to date him after the incident took place.

He will also have to pay a $112,000 fine, and $50,000 of that money will go the Ms Bennett, who moved to Oregon just months before the attack after accepting a job as a research chemist at Western Washington University.

Aside from the unusual invasion into Ms Bennett’s privacy, the story of the attack is becoming a disturbingly familiar trend as there have been many instances of sexual assaults during dates that came to fruition via online dating sites.

In Ms Bennett’s case, she met Bray at a drink at a bistro in downtown Bend, and they then went together to Bray’s condo which was directly across the street for a glass of wine.  Very soon after entering the condo, Ms Bennett was beaten, raped, and strangled until she passed out. She said that the abuse took place over the course of several hours.

After reporting the crime to police, she suffered scrutiny from both internet trolls and local news reporters, who published the police report and highlighted her bra size. She has since moved to Seattle.

‘Yes, I was raped. It doesn't make me a bad person. I didn't make poor choices. I was not the criminal,’ she told The Oregonian.  (Bray’s sentencing is) the one nugget that I could hold on to through all of this-- that a dangerous criminal will be off the streets.’

original article found here

ONLINE TARGETING & HARASSMENT

by Aidan Maconachy

(excerpts)

Most internet harassment goes on in chat rooms, messageboards and newsgroups, also via email. Internet law has tightened up since the early free wheeling days when there were very few controls in place. For example it's become a federal crime in the US to anonymously "annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person" via internet or other telecommunication systems. So it's on the books, if people choose to go after the bullies.

If you do become a target of harassment or defamation, stay cool. Don't react or get into a flame war with the people doing the harassing. Make a point though of keeping a record - emails, posted comments etc, along with dates, times and any identifying information that may come in handy at a later date.

Depending on the stealth method used, you might be able to acquire additional info about the source of the attack. Legitimate services such as "nslookup" and "tracert" enable users to track hosts, IP addresses and MAC addresses. There are also professional services you can enlist that use the information you provide to dig for additional info. Make sure they operate within the law, as some are little more than hackers-for-hire.

As in any ordinary case of harassment, it's important to build the case and gather the evidence. Don't release any of this material to the person you suspect is behind the abuse, until and if you are prepared to go the distance.

If you are concerned about your privacy and reputation, it may be advisable lower your profile. Often disengagement and non-reaction stops harassment because most cyber trolls and bullies get their jollies from the belief that they are ruining your life.

If there is no hidden history or baggage you are anxious to keep confidential i.e. criminal record or criminal activities, then continue to put your best foot forward.

It really comes down to the individual in the end. If you've nothing to hide - you have nothing to fear except fear itself.

This entire article can be read by clicking here

OUR VICTIMS WHO HAVE POSTED THEIR EVIDENCE
(all long but WELL WORTH A READ)
(because they have nothing to hide! their Cyberpaths do!)

Lissa Daly is a Cyberpath

Doug Beckstead: Predator

Masks of Sanity

Jason Capozello

(NOTE: What is really sad is that the Cyberpaths REFUSE to read these sites, or only come to EOPC to 'gather evidence' against their victims or apologize & own their behavior. They refuse because it conflicts with the twisted, whitewashed version of things they want to present to the world.

A blog by an exposed harasser:
CLICK HERE

Wonder who is telling the truth? Ask yourself -- what do the Victims above have to gain by admitting they got sucked in & used? Who tells the SAME story over & over - and WHO keeps rewriting, repositioning and revising their "versions of history?" And what do the Cyberpaths have to lose if the truth is out there?)

WHY PEOPLE ARE SUCH JERKS ONLINE

The concept of the flame war online is certainly nothing new. It's been around since before most people were even aware the internet existed. However, more people are starting to look into the issue of why people tend to be such incredible jerks online when they might be perfectly nice in person. It seems that there are few different things contributing to the effect.

First is that people somehow feel "disinhibited" when sitting behind a keyboard and monitor -- whether it's because of the supposed anonymity, the fact that you're effectively "invisible" or even the fact that there's a time lag between being a jerk and any response to it. The fact that you're somewhat separate from the response just makes it that much easier to be a jerk.

Some feel that it has even more to do with the lack of direct human contact in terms of either seeing hurt feelings or hearing someone's voice. There's just less empathy involved in seeing black and white text then seeing a physical reaction to being mean. Some of the latest research on this actually looked at how brains process messages during a conversation, and noted that in a normal conversation the person is tracking a variety of different cues in terms of how the other person is responding, and those cues help moderate what we say. Without any such cues when sitting behind a keyboard, you don't get any of the warning lights to moderate what you're saying, and the natural tendency is just to go right to the extreme edge without ever cooling off.

( EOPC has been dealing with a individuals - one on another discussion board where we occassionally posted; who have strung together a bunch of unrelated facts to try and indict us for our anonymity. Most of the facts revolve around victims we helped who they are trying to 'prove' is us. These victims went on to do a lot of work with DV victims like themselves. Unfortunately DV advocated attract just as many disordered naysayers who are desperate to place blame as we do. We are hanging in there.

If things like this are happening to you - take a breath and step back before you react to accusations or disordered or negative individuals (such as your cyberpath) who string together unrelated things in attempts to construct a 'gotcha' moment for you. If you try to defend yourself? These 'jerks' will take it as your 'admission of guilt' thereby setting up a no win situation for you. Stay in what you know to be truth and distance yourself from these types of people. We are.)

Of course, so far, it doesn't seem like the research is coming up with many good solutions to get people to moderate what they say online -- other than suggesting that using video communications might help. Other than that, perhaps just being more conscious of the fact that it really is a human being at the other end might help -- but so far that kind of "self awareness" hasn't caught on. And, even if it has, as long as one person in the group is unable to moderate his or her speech, it tends to set off many others as well.

Looks Respectable, but is She a Facebook Harasser?

By Paul Bracchi and Tanith Carey

(U.K.) Hiding anything? Kirsty Chapman looks like a respectable mother - but her photograph appears next to a pseudonym on Facebook that sends vile abuse to memorial pages

Appearances, they say, can be deceptive. Kirsty Chapman (blonde, slim, pretty) is perhaps living proof of this.

To the outside world, she is a respectable housewife and mother of three. Most days she can be seen out and about in fashionable jeans wheeling a pushchair near her home in Wales. Remember these details — in particular, the fact she has three children. They make what you are about to read all the more shocking.

For Miss Chapman’s photograph has become chillingly familiar on the internet. Often her Facebook photograph has appeared next to a pseudonym. One of these is ‘Percy’, whose activities have become notorious — targeting the bereaved with vile insults on Facebook tribute sites. It would be hard to imagine a more cruel or sadistic ‘hobby’. One such memorial site was created for 16-year-old Megan Moore, who died when she tripped and fell under a train at Angmering station near Littlehampton in West Sussex in 2009.

Among the countless (sincere) messages of condolence for the hugely popular Megan was one from ‘Percy’: ‘Did this whore really have over 10 thousand friends?’ it said. ‘Or is that her client list?’

‘Percy’ has also joked about abusing Madeleine McCann. The precise wording cannot be repeated in a family newspaper.

The online slang for individuals who specialise in this kind of abuse is ‘troll’. They get their perverse kicks by leaving malicious outpourings on discussion forums, chatrooms, blogs and, most commonly, memorial sites, with the sole intention of causing pain and grief.

Miss Chapman denies she is Percy. Her photograph, posted next to Percy’s sickening attacks, were put there by someone else, she says. It would be easy for anyone to take her photo from Facebook and it would certainly take someone with a twisted ego to put their own picture next to such abuse. So is she being trolled herself?

Jessica had a loving, very middle-class upbringing. So how did she become a victim of the Rochdale sex gang? Perhaps she has made an official complaint to Facebook? ‘No,’ said her boyfriend Darren Burton. ‘What the f*** can she [Kirsty] do about it?’

In fact, there is a procedure for removing fake identities from Facebook. To begin the process, users can click on the ‘help’ button after logging onto the social networking site, then choose the option marked: ‘Report abuse or policy violations.’ Some might think Miss Chapman’s failure to do so is surprising.

Most revealing, perhaps, is the fact she lives with Darren Burton, who says he met her trolling and who is, by his own admission, a serial ‘troll’. His alter ego, or internet persona, is ‘Nimrod Severn’. Burton, a railway worker, and Miss Chapman have been together for more than two years and are believed to be engaged.

Among the memorial websites Burton has targeted are those of singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse and murdered student Anuj Bidve, gunned down in Salford, Greater Manchester, on Boxing Day. ‘Rot in p***’ is the message Burton left for those grieving Anuj’s death.

When Burton was once challenged online about the hurt and upset he was causing bereaved families, he replied: ‘F*** ’um.’

He has also singled out Madeleine McCann. His vile contribution, using his Nimrod alias, was left on a website specifically set up to mock the missing youngster and her parents, called ‘I Found Maddy . . . She Was Under The Bed All Along’.

And guess whose posting is directly above Burton’s odious comment? The aformentioned ‘Percy’, accompanied by a picture of Kirsty Chapman.

The term ‘troll’ is thought to derive from a fishing technique of slowly dragging a baited hook from a moving boat. Internet ‘trolls’ post inflammatory remarks (the metaphorical ‘bait’) to trigger a response from those they have abused (the metaphorical ‘fish’).

Trolls say they do it for the ‘LULZ’, or laughs, a computer variation of LOL, meaning Laugh Out Loud.

In other words, their sociopathic behaviour is as much about manipulation and control as causing offence and inducing despair.

It is an offence under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003, punishable by up to six months in prison, to send an ‘electronic message’ that is ‘grossly offensive’ or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character’.

Last year, though 3,105 people were prosecuted, the statistics cover all forms of electronic communication, including phone calls. In reality, there have been only a handful of convictions for internet trolling.

Yet the list of those who have been subjected to sickening abuse at the hands of ‘trolls’ grows longer every week. According to the mores of this dark sub-culture, anyone is ‘fair game’.

The BBC called in the police over racist internet attacks on Ruth Brown, a contestant in its talent show The Voice, and former Blue Peter presenter Richard Bacon recently told how he and his family were subjected to a barrage of lewd and sinister comments from an online persecutor.

The scale of the problem, and the difficulty in identifying perpetrators, means ‘trolling’ is all but impossible to combat. Nevertheless, the small number of successful prosecutions do provide a revealing insight into individuals who usually remain hidden from public exposure.

Few could have guessed that Frank Zimmerman, from Barnwood, Gloucestershire, was a culprit. Neighbours say he is well-educated and speaks with a ‘posh’ accent. In a previous life, he was, apparently, a children’s author. Now aged 60, with long, white hair and a straggly beard, he was regarded as a harmless, reclusive eccentric. The worst that could be said of him was that, over the years, he had allowed the once pristine garden of his semi to become overgrown.

Yet a few weeks ago, he sent a chilling email to Tory MP Louise Mensch.

‘You now have a Sophie’s Choice,’ he wrote. ‘Which kid is to go? Who will you choose?’ The question was a reference to the 1982 film Sophie’s Choice, in which a mother, played by Meryl Streep, is forced to decide which of her two children will be sent to the gas chambers.

Mrs Mensch was also told her that her computer had been hacked and that images of her family would be posted online.

The email, which contained foul-mouthed insults, left her feeling ‘extremely scared’, she said. It was traced to Zimmerman’s computer through its IP address — a unique code assigned to every terminal.

Zimmerman was convicted in his absence last month after he failed to turn up in court. He was warned he could face possible imprisonment when he appeared before a judge two weeks ago. Sentencing was adjourned for reports.

Megan Moore who was killed after falling between a train and the platform was the victim of trolling

Indian student Anuj Bidve was gunned down as he walked with a group of friends in Salford - and he was the victim of trolling

The devastating legacy of ‘trolling’ can still be found on Facebook memorial pages for John Paul Massey, a four-year-old who was mauled to death by a pit bull terrier at his grandmother’s home in Liverpool more than two years ago.

Today, visitors to the site are greeted by a warning from the youngster’s mother. ‘All of John Paul’s pages are being monitored by police intelligence,’ she wrote. ‘Be warned, your computers will be traced and you will be imprisoned just like Colm Coss.’

Unemployed Coss, 38, from Manchester, was jailed for 18 weeks in 2010 for leaving obscene comments on the site. He also preyed on other sites, including one in memory of reality TV star Jade Goody. He said he found it ‘amusing’ and enjoyed the reaction, particularly from ‘more educated people’. Coss was arrested after sending photographs to neighbours describing himself as an ‘internet troll’. He lives in a ground-floor flat in Manchester’s Ardwick district.

Asked if he had any remorse for what he did, he replied: ‘This was two years ago. It’s done and dusted. It’s over. I don’t want to answer any questions whatsoever.’

Sean Duffy is another revered name among ‘trolls’. He persecuted the families of at least four dead youngsters. His stock in trade was defacing photographs of his victims with swastikas. When 15-year-old Natasha MacBryde took her own life by jumping in front of a train on Valentine’s Day 2011, Duffy put her face on a YouTube clip of Thomas the Tank Engine and renamed it ‘Tasha the Tank Engine’.

He had previously doctored a picture of another victim, who died in a car crash, adding the caption: ‘Used car sale, one useless owner.’ Cautioned in 2009, Duffy, who claimed he had Asperger’s syndrome, was jailed for 18 weeks last year. He is banned from Facebook and other social networking sites and has to inform police if he buys a mobile phone with internet access. Duffy, whose father is a writer, used to live just a few miles from his parents’ home in Tilehurst, Reading, Berkshire, but has moved away.

As we know, though, not all ‘trolls’ are unemployed loners like Sean Duffy and Colm Coss, or, indeed, are male. Back in South Wales, we caught up with Darren Burton (aka ‘Nimrod Severn’) at the flat he shares with Kirsty Chapman and her children.

Miss Chapman was in, but did not come to the door. Burton admitted to being a ‘troll’ for the past two-and-a-half years, but said that he has stopped. His excuse for targeting memorial sites is one often trotted out by ‘trolls.’ ‘I think grief should be a private thing — I don’t understand why people who have lost someone need to tell everyone about it,’ he said. ‘And I don’t get why people who never knew the person who died feel they want a slice of the action by jumping on a bandwagon. They’re just “grief tourists”. It’s not really me saying those things anyway, it’s another person I become when I go online as Nimrod Severn or whatever name I assume.

‘The online world is not the real world.’ And people, he says, can ‘log off’ if they don’t like what they find.

He flatly denied that Miss Chapman was ‘Percy’. She had ‘trolled’, he admitted, but had never targeted memorial sites.

Last year, however, they were interviewed by a man who has spent the past two years monitoring the activities of ‘trolls’ for a book. The source wanted to include Burton and Chapman and they agreed to speak to him.

The conversation on Skype (that is, a conference call via computer) took place in December and lasted more than an hour. The Mail has a copy of the tape. On it, Burton refers to Miss Chapman as ‘Percy’. He speaks about his feelings for her and reveals how they met.

Interviewer: ‘She [referring to another female troll he spoke to] says Percy is really lovely an’ all.’

Burton: ‘Yeah, sure. I wouldn’t be with her if she wasn’t.’

Interviewer: ‘Did you find love through trolling?’

Burton: ‘Yeah.’

Miss Chapman also talks about ‘Percy’. At one point, she jokingly asks: ‘What did you think of Percy — did you find him handsome?’

Frank Zimmerman aimed abuse at MP Louise Mensch

There were also a string of admissions from Burton about some of the people he claims they have targeted, including Ayana Colbert, a black teenager from Georgia in the U.S. who killed herself in April 2010. Shortly after her death, a photograph of a black woman, resembling Ayana, hanging from the neck was posted on the internet and captioned: ‘Most Chimps Like to Swing About.’

The racist slur was attributed to Burton (aka ‘Nimrod’) at the time. When questioned about this by the interviewer, Burton says: ‘No, Kirsty’s done that as well.’

Confronted by the Mail, Burton did not deny such a conversation took place, but claimed he and Miss Chapman were ‘winding up’ the interviewer because they knew he had ‘outed trolls’ in the past. Or, as Burton also put it: ‘He [the interviewer} has “f***** everyone else up”, so they “f***** his head up”.’

What was Burton’s justification for his trolling? Ah yes, if the bereaved don’t like what they read on the internet, then they can just ‘log off’. Try telling that to the loved ones of Megan Moore, the 16-year-old who fell under a train. ‘A work colleague told me that Megan’s page had been targeted,’ says Megan’s mother Lorraine, an assistant manager at a pre-school. 'I wanted to look at the page to see what her friends were writing, but I knew that I would find it too traumatic, reading those horrible things. Still, to this day, I have not looked and cannot bring myself to do so. These trolls have to be stopped before they do the same to another family. I cannot understand what motivates them. They cannot ever have lost someone close to them or they would know what we are going through.’

As a mother of three young children, Kirsty Chapman, if she is Percy, should know that better than anyone.

original article here

Over 400 Online Bullying Incidents in Wales in 2011

(U.K.) Almost 400 incidents of cyber harassment and bullying were investigated by police in Wales last year, we can reveal.

Victims of abusive, threatening or harassing messages sent via social networks included teenagers as young as 14.

The problem has increasingly hit the headlines in recent months with celebrity victims Katherine Jenkins and former Miss Wales Imogen Thomas complaining publicly about being subjected to vitriolic online attacks.

Away from such high profile cases, in the South Wales Police force area alone 331 harassment-related incidents classed as “e-crime” were investigated, but resulted in just three arrests.

A Freedom of Information request identified 46 cyber crimes in the Dyfed-Powys Police area, resulting in 12 arrests. Offences included 10 hate crimes, one kidnapping and one threat to kill. Eight victims were under the age of 20. In North Wales, where 18 crimes on social networks were recorded, police investigated one offender for harassment while using a false identity.

Two cases were referred to the High Tech Crime Unit in Gwent, involving harassment messages, and e-mails sent to trustees of an organisation alleging homophobic harassment and bullying. However no further action was taken.

The Child Exploitation and Online Protection (Ceop) Centre is currently running a programme called Thinkuknow to educate children and young people about the dangers of “trolling” they face online.

A spokesman said: “Trolling is a description given to someone’s online actions that are deliberately inflammatory or abusive. It ranges from posting a nasty comment on a social networking profile, or a football forum to extreme and persistent abuse.

“It could include harassment, bullying or anything that causes distress to another. The effects can be devastating. Too few people realise that in acting this way online you can quickly break the law. People may think they can remain anonymous when they are online, that they can say and do things they wouldn’t dream of doing in real life without consequences.”

A spokesman for eCrime Wales said: “The e-Crime Partnership, which includes the four Welsh police forces, works to raise awareness of e-crimes of all kinds. The fact that these incidents are now being reported by the public reflects the fact that people in Wales are becoming more aware of the issue generally and of the importance of passing details of such attacks to the police.”

Jonathan Bishop, a South Wales-based internet expert who recently ran a Trolling Academy tutorial, said that as the numbers of arrests were low, fixed penalties and Asbos should be used against cyberbullies for less severe offences. It would be more appropriate then if local authorities, particularly where vulnerable persons are affected, used their powers under New Labour’s anti-social behaviour legislation to issue fixed-penalties to those who harass others, he said. “Local authorities also have the powers to apply for Asbos against persons, which could tell the cyberbullies that they can go to jail for up to two years if they continue their abuse.”

Criminal cases involving the malicious use of false identities on social networks are becoming increasingly common.

In August James Edward Dunn, 28, from Middlesbrough, was jailed for seven years for raping a 15-year-old girl he had lured into meeting by lying about his age on Facebook.

At the time the investigating officer, Detective Constable Jolene Morrison, had urged teenagers who use Facebook to “only speak to people that they know” and to be aware that the person they think they are talking to may not actually be that person.

In September Sean Duffy, 25, from Reading, was jailed for 18 weeks for taunting the families of four dead teenagers on online tribute sites.

And in November, police in Mid Wales vowed to crack down on “trolls” after a 14-year-old sex abuse victim was subjected to an online smear campaign after her attackers were brought to justice.

Mr Bishop, a town councillor for Treforest, said the use of false identities – by “Snerts” who post messages to harm others, and “E-Vengers” who are driven to harm others they feel have wronged them – is a serious problem.

original article found here

Being 'Anonymous' Online Changes People's Behavior

Faceless communication online or over phone often turns nice people nasty
By Diane Mapes


(excerpts)
One minute, they’re nice, normal people. The next, they’re frothing at the mouse.

“It’s mind-boggling the things people will say and even the things I will say,” says Catherine McIntyre, a 38-year-old medical billing specialist from Houston. “People who’d never say something horrible in real life will do it again and again and again online. It’s like the behavior of crowds, or those mass beatings where no one gets blamed because everyone’s at fault.”

Sheri Pineda, a 59-year-old customer service representative at the Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., encounters the same bad behavior in the after-hours messages left by her newspaper’s subscribers.

“It’s appalling the way people talk,” Pineda says. “They’ll rant and rave and cuss at us with extremely foul language. And I think a lot them specifically wait until we close the phones. They’re looking to let it all out and then get on with their day. And then they’re surprised when I get back to them. They’re like, ‘You actually heard that?’ and will be embarrassed.”

Hello. You have reached the split personality zone. Press 1 to melt down. Press 2 to hang up and act like a normal person again.

I, anonymous
Between out-of-control customers, vituperative online posters and road-raging drivers, it’s hard to find an individual who hasn’t succumbed to the siren song of faceless, consequence-free communication. Online boards are clogged with insults hurled by readers hiding behind deceptively mild screen names — (“I hope you rot in hell!” signed Kittyface) — and customer service reps endure blistering tirades from disembodied voices week in and week out.

These days there are a dozen ways to communicate without actually having to look somebody in the eye. As a result, not only have we developed an abrupt, abbreviated way to chat (IMHO), but our technological advances have spawned new psychological terms such as “online disinhibition effect” to explain our tendency to open up — in both good ways and bad — when we’re sitting in front of a screen.

In a February 2008 study published in the journal Psychological Reports, researchers found that out of four groups of participants, only those in the anonymous group took part in antisocial behavior — in this case defined as violating rules to obtain a reward.

“I definitely believe that anonymity affects the frequency of antisocial behavior among individuals to some extent, even when these individuals have a reasonable sense of morality — so-called ‘ordinary people,’” says study author Tatsuya Nogami of Nagoya University in Japan.

“In my personal opinion, people generally try to comply with social norms in everyday life, even when such compliance with norms and rules conflicts with their personal self-interests. However, if you can get what you want without receiving any punishment or negative evaluations from others, are you still 100 percent sure that you’ll always refrain from engaging in that kind of undesirable behavior?”

Rage against the machine
...
McIntyre, the billing specialist from Houston, says the online news forums she’s participated in over the years have led her down many a dark and dysfunctional corridor.

“People get sucked in,” she says. “You can be whoever you want, you can put out there whatever you want, and there are no consequences. I even got sucked in and was mean to people. I consider myself better than that, but I did it too, and that bothers me. I guess it’s just the dynamic.”

Rider University psychology professor John Suler wrote about this dynamic in his 2004 paper “The Online Disinhibition Effect.” In it, he describes both toxic disinhibition — angry, threatening behavior such as that seen in flame wars or cyberbullying — and benign disinhibition, in which people make overly personal revelations due to the intimate nature of the medium. (Think online daters who “fall in love” without ever meeting.)

A lot of this effect has to do with feedback — or lack thereof, says Wallace.

“The environment affects how you behave,” she says. “Any time you go to places where you’re not known — even if it’s a hotel in another city — you might be more aggressive. So when you construct an environment like the Internet or long-distance call centers with a help desk worker in Bangalore, you’re creating an environment that facilitates uncharacteristic behavior.

You’re not getting those nonverbal cues that calibrate your behavior and give you feedback if you’re going off track. Those people who do customer service for Comcast probably need double doses of Zoloft.”

Cherise Oleksak, a 35-year-old cable TV customer service representative from Fife, Wash., says dealing with people’s disinhibited side can definitely be a challenge. Some scream and rage; others get a little more, uh, personal.

“You’ll get people who will turn into perverts,” she says. ”They’ll ask you out or ask you to do (FREE) phone sex. They’ll be like, ‘Can you read those pay-per-view adult movie titles out loud to me again?’”

Robin Taylor, 42, a customer care representative from Nashville, Tenn., says she’s seen this split, as well.
...

“I guess they feel they can say whatever they want because they’re anonymous, but the funny thing is we have all their information: their name, their address, their phone number, even part of their Social Security number.

Not that I would ever retaliate, but if we ended up with some psycho (employee), it could happen.”

Going public
Interestingly enough, some folks are starting to retaliate.

Surreptitious tape recordings of outrageously bad customer behavior have started to pop up on YouTube in all their profanity-laced glory.

In 2004, comedienne Margaret Cho posted dozens of hateful e-mail messages she’d received in response to a monologue on her Web site, along with each sender’s full name and e-mail address. Shamed — and deluged with their own hate mail from Cho’s fans — some posters sent in abject letters of apology.

In the online world, abusive users hiding behind anonymous screen names are being outed, sometimes to huge public embarrassment as when Whole Foods chief executive John Mackey was unmasked as the sock puppet responsible for posting numerous attacks against competitors on a Yahoo! financial message board.

And media sites from Sacramento to Soho are stepping up their moderation of anonymous comments in an attempt to keep the incivility down to a low roar.

“When we first started with online blogs and that sort of thing, people weren’t aware of how much the environment could affect their behavior, but now people are getting much more savvy about it,” Wallace says. “But the issue that needs to be considered now is there’s no privacy. People need to recognize that they just can’t send out these blogging responses and e-mails and expect their anonymity to be preserved. It probably won’t be.

Recording devices are everywhere and Web 2.0, with its user-generated content, greatly amplifies the Net’s power to expose and publicize.

“It also archives forever.”

(full article found here)

(please see our far right column for a few of the VICTIMS of Exposed Predators and how they fought back against smear and lies from the Exposed Predators)

Facebook Getting Tough with Abusive Trolls

Vicious "trolls" who heap abuse on total strangers on the Internet for fun are being targeted in a Facebook crackdown. Tribute pages honoring the dead, such as soldiers in Afghanistan, have become a recent favorite of the ugly trolls, reports the Telegraph. Facebook users can manually delete abusive messages, but company engineers are now working on new systems that will automatically delete the hurtful slams. Facebook already tracks suspected trolls—those who repeatedly communicate with non-friends, or whose friend requests are often rejected.

Facebook is stepping up some site surveillance in the wake of mounting complaints about cyberbullying and pedophiles stalking users. Britain's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center has recently initiated a Facebook site that offers advice and links to report cyber abuse. The official in charge of the center has criticized Facebook for refusing to add a "panic button" on each page to report problems.

original article here

Judge Spares Woman Jail After she Plotted Attack on Internet 'Troll'

Judge spares mother jail after she plotted attack on internet 'troll' who posted horrific comments about disabled daughter


by Chris Greenwood

A mother who joined a revenge attack on a man responsible for a vile campaign of internet abuse against her disabled daughter has been spared prison.

Sylvia Hooper, 52, was described as a ‘decent and law-abiding’ woman who dedicated her life to her seriously ill daughter Kim Arnold. But she snapped after looking on helplessly as a cowardly bully sent her daughter a series of appalling comments via Facebook.

Mrs Hooper faced a jail sentence after identifying Christopher Berwick and confronting him outside his home in Chatham, Kent.

But a judge – who labelled the messages ‘disgraceful and shameful’ – took pity on Mrs Hooper after hearing they were part of a long-term campaign.

The case is the latest evidence of the growing impact of online bullying and abuse through social networking sites. Known as ‘trolling’, it sees abusers, who often hide behind a veil of anonymity or false identities, deluging their victims with cruel taunts. Campaigners have repeatedly called for websites to take swifter action against the ‘trolls’.

Miss Arnold was sent a series of messages via a false Facebook account that left her deeply depressed, Maidstone Crown Court was told. One labelled her a cripple and said that Miss Arnold, who is a wheelchair user, should be left to ‘roll down a hill'.

A judge at Maidstone Crown Court labelled the messages 'shameful' and took pity on Mrs Hooper after hearing they were part of a long-term campaign.

Another message read: ‘Your mother should have had an abortion. She only had you because she felt sorry for you.’

Mrs Hooper realised the culprit was Mr Berwick, who lived nearby, and joined her son Robert and his friend Soloman Taylor outside his home. Mr Hooper, 19, punched Mr Berwick after his mother said ‘hit him’ and the bully was then taken back to the family home by car. He was forced to crawl inside and make a ‘grovelling apology’ to his victim while on all fours. At one point he was hit on the chin with a rolled up newspaper.

Prosecutor Neil Sandys said Mr Berwick originally tried to blame his then girlfriend but eventually admitted being responsible. He said the Facebook exchange was ‘low, mean, base and shameful’ and added that Mr Berwick admitted doing it before.

Mrs Hooper’s solicitor Catharine Donnelly said the comments were ‘beyond the pale’ and told the court ‘none of us would be here today’ without his actions.

Speaking about Mrs Hooper, she said: ‘She is a decent woman who has devoted herself to her daughter. She has led a decent and law-abiding life. It is clear she is a woman who will never trouble these courts again. She was an encourager, rather than a hitter.’

Danny Moore, for Mr Hooper, said Mr Berwick got a kick out of ‘playing mind games with a severely disabled young lady’.

He highlighted how police told the victims there was nothing they could do and the bully was not prosecuted for sending malicious messages.

All three admitted assault but denied false imprisonment and the judge ruled that not guilty verdicts should be entered.

Judge Richard Polden said it ‘troubled him’ that Mrs Hooper had said, ‘hit him’, but accepted that Mr Hooper was acting out of a ‘protective instinct’ to his sister. He said: ‘I sentence you on the basis that Mr Berwick sent messages that were wholly disgraceful and shameful but then tried to put the blame on his girlfriend.’

Mrs Hooper was given a conditional discharge.

The two men were given community orders which included voluntary work.


original article