The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has many eccentric characters very excited about it. Most of these are harmless, well meaning but a little bit credulous towards conspiracy theories. Some are victims of real abuse, others however, are vile. One exceptionally unpleasant character is the operator of the @Ciabaudo twitter account. MHN can reveal that @Ciabaudo is in fact Alan Goodwin, a British man living in Germany and working for domestic goods manufacturer Miele. Goodwin frequently seems to spend his days churning out tweets expressing his concerns about gays, Jews, Israel and / or alleged Jewish / Israeli / gay paedophiles. When third parties complained to Miele, they believe their personal data was disclosed. Now the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is investigating.

Alan Goodwin, Miele employee expresses concerns about ‘nepotist’ Jews – by implication in some work context.

David Hencke’s recent humiliation in a libel claim brought by former MP John Hemming has caused great consternation in the ever-shrinking portion of the conspiracy-sphere who are willing to back Esther Baker’s allegations. The difficulty is that for all Esther Baker’s coy hints about the ‘truth’, her claims of abuse have gone nowhere. Baker has alleged extraordinary, cult-like abuse in multiple countries over a period of years. The police took statements from 30 people, with the interviews of Baker alone lasting 91-and-a-half-hours (source). Yet the only outstanding police investigation regarding the ‘historic abuse’ is into allegations against Esther Baker. Even for true believers it is getting a bit passé.

Ms Baker herself admits in public on Twitter to significant mental illnesses including references to auditory hallucinations and home visits from the mental health team, yet even after the police investigation some of her supporters do not appear willing to consider that she may be mistaken about the identity of her abusers or other details.

The only promising bit of excitement is Baker’s libel case against Hemming and his counterclaim. A preliminary hearing is now likely to be listed in late February or early March. As reported at IICSA, Baker is suing Hemming for libel for allegedly accusing her of lying. Hemming countersues over her allegedly accusing him of rape on Twitter.

One of Esther Baker’s vilest supporters is Alan Goodwin, a British man living in Rietberg, Germany and who goes by the name @Ciabaudo (archive) on Twitter. Goodwin uses Twitter to discuss the things of concern to him, which include amongst other things, Jews and Israel. As early as 2013 Goodwin was tweeting about ‘nepotist’ Jews (archive).

More recently, Goodwin has repeatedly and gratuitously linked Israel and the Jewish people to various controversies over alleged sexual abuse conspiracies in the United Kingdom. One especially unhinged allegation was this, which was sent from Gütersloh (the city where Mr Goodwin works for Miele as opposed to Rietberg where he lives) –

In this tweet, Goodwin makes the totally unhinged and ludicrous allegation that a British Secretary of State from a (non-Jewish) ethnic minority flew to Israel to conspire with a foreign intelligence service to cover up UK child abuse.

For the benefit of non-UK readers the MP he is accusing is a respected member of the Conservative Party right wing and they are non-white, non-Jewish. The allegations are obviously false and directed at members of two minority racial groups. Of course despite his occasional lapses Goodwin has tried to be a little more subtle with his hate since 2013. He frequently interposes his comments about Jews with statements decrying anti-Semitism or hate crime. For example, in this tweet about survivors he gratuitously mentions the blood libel before decrying it as a ‘hate crime’ (archive) –

In this comment, Ciabaudo works the blood libel into a discussion about toxic ‘abuse’ ‘survivors’.

Of course, Jews are not Ciabaudo’s only concern. He tweets frequently about ‘gays’ too, for example (archive) –

In this delightful tweet Goodwin accuses former Prime Minister David Cameron of trying to protect paedophiles hiding in the gay community.

Oddly however, Goodwin is far less willing to condemn ‘paedophile’ ‘gays’ when they share another characteristic. That characteristic being Nazism. I first noticed Goodwin when he started to comment on myself. This year I spent a lot of time helping pro-bono on four court cases, of which one was John Hemming’s largely successful and now settled libel claim against David Hencke.

Goodwin started to quote and link to a largely false article on a Kiwi Farms spin-off owned by non-other than Joshua Conner Moon. Goodwin also tweeted an irrelevant picture of myself and Milo Yiannopoulos. As Goodwin does so love to raise tenuous associations, I feel no regret at giving context regarding his ‘source’. Goodwin used ‘information’ from a website run by this man –

Joshua Moon enhances his employability by publicly asking Jews if he can cut off their fingers. Click for full size.

This Joshua Conner Moon –

In this tweet, Moon calls for genocide (his word) for Muslims. Click for full size.

That is the same Joshua Moon who hosted the infamous board /phile/ on his now defunct site 16chan, a board expressly for admitted paedophiles to share material within certain legal loopholes. The board was never removed because sharing paedophile stories, including child-rape and murder stories, was within the rules Moon had set forth and is not illegal in some countries. In the United States and England the book “Lolita” is not illegal nor are other text stories about paedophile activity.

One story on Joshua Moon’s site was about a 5-year-old boy being abducted, having a hole sliced in him and penetrated by ‘Big J’ with his penis. The child was then raped to death. That is who Mr Goodwin chooses to read and cite online. Of course child murders by Kiwi Farmers are not limited just to fantasy. In December 2017, Kiwi Farms member William Atchison murdered two children after chatting about school shootings with Josh on Kiwi Farms.

Goodwin’s online activities over a period of years have increasingly begun to cause embarassment for his employers at Miele. There have been multiple articles naming Goodwin and his employers. This one (archive) describes Goodwin as a ‘conspiraloon’. Another is here (archive). In each case Miele has been mentioned. Multiple individuals have complained to Miele because Goodwin has appeared to spew out vile racist hate and libel on what seem to be workdays during working hours, at times from the location in Gütersloh where he works. One can only wonder what his wife Gisela who lives with him at their home in Rietberg thinks of it all. Miele deny that any of the tweets were sent during working hours. They state that Goodwin was not at work on the days concerned. They further claim that German law prohibits them from taking action.

It surprises me Goodwin has not been sued in the UK. The ‘libel tourism’ provisions of the Defamation Act 2013 do not apply to defendants living in the EEA. Goodwin’s tweets are aimed at and read by a UK audience. The damage he causes is in the UK. There is nothing to stop a UK claimant bringing proceedings here, applying to serve out of the jurisdiction and Germany will enforce UK judgements.

Despite numerous complaints, Goodwin continues to churn out nasty defamatory tweets – now sourcing literally genocidal neo-Nazi red-room-fetishist murderous paedophiles. It also strikes me as odd that Goodwin’s racial hatred has not been dealt with by Twitter. What could the explanation be?

What is Miele’s approach to this issue? I put these allegations to Miele and its MD Markus Miele. Company spokesman Carsten Prudent claimed that German law prohibited them from taking action unless it impacted his work, or was done on working time or company equipment –

“As far as I know, Alan Goodwin claims to campaign against the belittlement and coverups of the sexual abuse of children. In this context, he expresses himself as a private individual, outside working hours and without using any company equipment. Consequently, the Miele Company considers Alan Goodwin’s activities on social media to be a private matter without any connection to his employment status, and will therefore not pass any comment with regards to content.

According to German law, an employer can only forbid the private activities of an employee if such activities are also in contravention of work-related duties. This could possibly be the case if an employee commits an offence or in any other way violates the rights of third parties, where such activities could be injurious to the company. As far as we know, Alan Goodwin has neither been accused nor convicted of a crime nor have any other decisions against him been taken in a court of law.”

However, the tweet above about the British MP was sent from Gütersloh (as were others), where Miele is based and some tweets were sent between 9am and 5:30pm CET which are normal working hours in many companies. When I raised this, company spokesman Carsten Prudent told me,

“Alan Goodwin did not act during working hours and without using company equipment. In addition, he is expressly forbidden to do both. Your assertion that he acted during working hours is incorrect.”

Miele remained adamant so I exported all of Goodwin’s recent tweets and filtered for the ones sent on working days between 9 and 5:30 pm Central European Time (where his workplace is). After filtering there were 257 tweets. In December alone, Goodwin tweeted apparently within normal working hours on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 11th, 13th, 20th and 21st. When this was put to Miele, they responded as follows –

“Alan Goodwin has declared in lieu of oath that he has never posted any tweets during his working hours or using Miele equipment.

As far as timelines indicate activities during normal office hours, Alan Goodwin claims that he was not on duty at all or there were break times which he had to arrange flexibly depending on the amount and urgency of his work.

However, in order to avoid misunderstandings in the future, Alan Goodwin also assured a couple of months ago that he does not post during breaks anymore but only before or after work or on days when he is, for whatever reason, not on duty. Alan Goodwin assures that he has consistently complied with this and will continue to do so.

Regarding the tweets listed by you, Alan Goodwin explains: “It is clear from the location or time information that all of the postings were either made outside my office hours or not from Gütersloh or at times when I was not in the office for various private reasons.””

It seems that Miele has at least taken some action – instructing Goodwin not to tweet during working hours and it is equally clear that as a result of scrutiny he has now agreed to only tweet at times when it is pellucidly clear he is not at work. Goodwin can expect his future tweets to be subject to severe scrutiny. Interested parties may also take steps to independently verify when he is at the office in future.

Another concern is that outright hate for a specific group is prohibited by Twitter rules. So often anti-Semites curiously get a pass so I sent this article to the CEO of Twitter asking why it was okay to spread wild – proper fake news conspiracy theories and anti-Israel, anti-Semitic hate on the platform.

It is important to note that Miele may be innocent and may obtain a completely clean bill of health from the ICO. Nonetheless, the ongoing association with Mr Goodwin is clearly damaging their reputation, fairly or not.