Category Archives: Human Rights

Getting Stuffed for Christmas: Dr Louise June Moody to be Sued Over Child Abuse Allegations?

Posted on by
Reply

Recently Dr Louise June Moody publicly accused Simon Just of child abuse and linked with endorsement to another account which has been accusing him of operating the Twitter account @ReporterLAL. The linked allegations further state that Just tried to frame me, Samuel Collingwood Smith as the operator of the account. Needless to say, I was interested in this and wrote to Moody inviting her to provide evidence. If she could persuade me that was true, I would be totally on her side. She has not provided a shred, so I have agreed to help Simon Just sue her, pro-bono, I have helped Just draft court forms, Particulars and a letter of claim.

As most people know, I fall firmly on Dr Moody’s side of the transgender debate. Readers may remember this article, “Why Straight Men Should Support Lesbians and Feminists Over ‘Drop the T’”. I have every reason, had she a shred of evidence, to back her against Just. She has made some pretty serious allegations. She refuses to provide so much as a morsel of evidence. Calling people a child abuser and abuser of the dead is a serious, potentially very expensive, allegation –

Dr Louise Moody Accuses Just of Child Abuse

Dr Louise Moody accuses Simon Just of child abuse and abusing a dead person, refuses to provide any evidence then emails to accuse me of aggressive and hyperbolic emails!

So, obviously the situation is urgent. I helped Simon draft a form N1, Particulars of Claim and pre-action letter. He sent these to Dr Moody and I forwarded them to her. I explained I was a law graduate, who sometimes helps as a McKenzie Friend. As I am not a solicitor, I explained she needed to deal with Simon directly (or instruct a representative to do so). Moody’s response was bizarre. She firstly said I was not a legal representative. Admitted. I am a law graduate with an LL.M LPC (Commendation). I never said otherwise.

Lay advisors are allowed to give legal advice, charge for doing so and assist with documents per the current guidelines here (paragraph 27). It makes the form N1 no less correct. It will be not one whit less valid when filed on the court computer system on Friday. In reply, she accused me of being hyperbolic. She is accusing Simon Just of abusing children and dead people and produced no evidence. Then she is saying I am hyperbolic!

Bottom line, Moody has made apparently, so far, baseless allegations of child abuse. She has failed to produce evidence to back it up (Kiwi Farms does not count as evidence). These are serious allegations capable of inciting serious harm against Just. Simon Just has reported her to police. She can apologise or Just intends to issue his claim.

Share Button

Paizo: Abuse of Female Whistleblower by Wizards of the Coast Author Jessica Price

Posted on by
5
JessicaPrice_2021-09-26

Jessica Rice publicly attacks Tonya Woldridge, an employee of a commercial rival, in profane terms. She later reveals it is because Woldridge blew the whistle on disputed allegations Price made in a private workplace forum. Are Chris Cox, CEO of Wizards of the Coast, and Brian Goldner, Hasbro CEO comfortable with this behaviour? Click for full size. Original tweet (archive)

Paizo is a small company that makes Pathfinder, a niche competitor to Dungeons and Dragons aimed at people who prefer old fashioned, complicated rules to newer more streamlined ones. It is best known for the IP behind the Pathfinder: Kingmaker, and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, PC games. After the dismissal of the Paizo Customer Service and Community Manager, Sara Marie Teter, an online mob of angry extremists have been demanding change, resignations and and an independent investigation into the supposed, “wrongful termination”, despite the fact that the dismissed staffer does not appear to have alleged wrongful termination. The mob, whose anger has been fuelled by fired, former Paizo staffer Jessica Price, has focused its ire on another female member of staff. Worse, one of her explicitly stated motives was that the victim disclosed content from a “private” workplace forum run by Price. Price is now an author on multiple Wizards of the Coasts (WotC) products. MHN contacted WotC and parent company Hasbro to ask for an explanation.

Jessica Price is a contentious figure in the niche world of science fiction, science fiction and gaming. She is known for regularly criticising former employers including Microsoft (archive), Paizo (archive) and ArenaNet (archive).

Most recently, she has attacked a former Paizo employee, Tonya Woldridge, Paizo’s Director of Community – and it is not okay. The vicious attack is problematic not because of its profane nature, nor because it looks remarkably like cyber-bullying, but because her express motivation (archive) is that Tonya Woldridge made what would, here in the UK, be a legally protected disclosure about potentially illegal and immoral conduct by Price. Similar whistleblowing protections also apply in some states of the United States. For the avoidance of doubt, I am not alleging that Price has violated any US law. I am merely alleging that she is morally guilty of bad behaviour against a former colleague because of that colleague’s behaviour.

JessicaPrice_2021-09-26_B

Jessica Rice makes clear her motives for her vicious attacks on Tonya Woldridge. It is because Woldridge blew the whistle on disputed allegations Price made in a secret workplace forum. Original tweet (archive).

Continue reading →

Share Button

Hemming v Poulton: Partial Strike Out and Poulton Faces New £500,000 Claim

Posted on by
12

Judgement was handed down in Hemming v Poulton today. Ms Poulton is presenting it as an unqualified success on her fundraising page. In fact Hemming succeeded in having parts of Ms Poulton’s amended Defence struck out. Deputy Master Bard struck out all of Ms Poulton’s Defence of Honest Opinion and parts of her Truth defence, with further amendments likely on both sides and no end in sight. Her harassment counter-claim survives although that is not a high bar in a fact sensitive statutory tort. The hearing also dealt with a counter-counter-claim (in effect) by the 4th Party Darren Laverty. Despite the best efforts of Ms Poulton’s barrister Richard Munden of 5RB, who filed an 18 page Skeleton Argument, unrepresented Laverty got permission to bring a £500,000 (half-million) libel claim against Poulton. Finally, it was also confirmed that Ms Poulton is under police investigation for revealing the names of two underage child abuse victims in a video interview. 

Sonia Poulton Video Statement

Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

Your author did not participate in the hearing today as he was working, but had it on in the background at times (like the radio!), except when having connection problems. The judgement was only an initial procedural one, but one thing that amused me was that despite Poulton engaging an expensive lawyer to rewrite her pleadings the judge still struck out parts of it. She is also not trying to prove the Truth of Esther Baker’s allegations. Anyone on hashtag #Truth is going to be disappointed.

The judge criticised Sonia’s pleas on meaning.

Judge strikes out the plea of honest opinion in the absence of specification of what that opinion was.

Continue reading →

Share Button

Sonia Poulton: Prove My Views Are Not Fake!

Posted on by
13
Sonia Poulton Video Statement

Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

So, there was a hearing today in Hemming v Poulton. The hearing began with Sonia agreeing to pay me £279 in costs. I then left, and wanted to wait until after the hearing to write about the other matters. Under the Civil Procedure Rules, a large of documents passed into the public domain. The hearing was an application by John Hemming to strike out or summarily judge Sonia Poulton’s pleadings as deficient. Poulton, to some extent, agreed and cross-applied to amend. Defences she still relies upon however, are an allegation she cannot be sure that views on her collaboration with Shaun Attwood were not purchased.

At the outset, I should say that I am a party to these proceedings and so my point of view is naturally selective and focused on my best case. However, since Sonia Poulton has been tweeting all day, a few balancing facts are in order.

Are you donating to Sonia? Did she tell you it is all about Truth? #Truth? Really. Check out this from her defence –

An extract from Sonia Poulton’s defence asking him to prove that the views on her video collaboration with Shaun Attwood are not fake.

If I were a professional journalist I would rather settle than run this as part of my defence. To be clear, Sonia expanded on this in a witness statement that was used in the hearing and therefore became public domain under the collateral use rule –

Continue reading →

Share Button

Poulton v Hemming: Poulton pays my costs of correcting her lawsuit!

Posted on by
1
Sonia Poulton Video Statement

Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. This morning though, she actually had to pay mine and another man’s modest costs of correcting her pleadings. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

At a hearing in the High Court before Deputy Master Bard this morning, Sonia Poulton agreed to pay my costs. Why? John Hemming is suing Sonia Poulton. She has entered a defence, which we thought was deficient. Sonia then counter-claimed alleging John, myself and a third man, “harassed her”. Mostly by criticising her on blogs and suing her. John applied to strike-out. Sonia initially talked to tough, but then applied to amend her pleadings. Unfortunately, they were still deficient and she agreed to remove one of her proposed changes at my request. The rest I agreed (because the court usually allows one chance at fixing poorly drafted pleadings, and because I am confident to defend them).

As a result, Sonia agreed to pay me £219, plus another £60 for my time amending my defence if the court does not strike out or summarily the pleadings on John’s application. Not the best start to her claim. Sonia has commented extensively on social media, so I will be doing an article later setting out some of the true facts of the case for people who might be minded to support her or even donate. Sonia also agreed to pay £225 to the third man.

However, I will be waiting until after the hearing of John’s application as I want to be careful as to what is said in court and what documents are referred to, so check back later or tomorrow. I have limited this post to decided matters. I would add that I have a high opinion of Deputy Master Bard who very kindly and professionally granted me an Order back in the days when you could go see the (Deputy) Masters in practice, whilst I was a law student.

Share Button

Big Tech Unites Planet … Against Them, Over Political Censorship

Posted on by
Reply

I never thought I would see a day when German President Angela Merkel would defend Donald Trump (archive). But, she gets it. Social media is now a key way people discuss politics. So, when a person is banned for their opinions, it is like the phone company saying you cannot talk on their phones, because they do not like what you say. That is not to say some measure of control is important – terrorism is illegal on an old fashioned phone and it should be illegal on social media. However, it is not for Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey to be deciding what is acceptable speech.

ScaredChild

Social media censors the speech of vulnerable groups but frequently fails to censor child pornography and extremist anti-Semitism.

Imagine you are a politician. You observe, in the middle of a US Election, a group of powerful companies undermine a candidate’s campaign then ban them on contentious grounds. That candidate is the incumbent President of the United States of America. Regardless of party or nation, a chill would hit your stomach. Because, if it can happen to the most powerful politician on Earth, it can happen to you. Boris Johnson here in the UK gets it. He got it in November, according to the Daily Mail (archive). Merkel gets it. the French get it. It is now a priority in nearly every Western Nation. Trump’s ban hit them where they live.

The ban of Parler too was crass. It was as if Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerberg put on tutus and, “We am r hav oligarchy an’ monopoly iz sexi” t-shirts before doing a high-kicking song and dance routine about their excessive market power on the front page of YouTube. In the short term it revealed their power. In the long term it all but guaranteed that power will be taken away.

The problem is that Zuckerberg and Dorsey are not politicians. They had a metallic fist that they had hidden in a velvet glove behind impenetrable walls of complexity such as post ranking algorithms. Their soft power, had they kept it soft, would have been hard to challenge and could have stayed obfuscated – at least enough to deter politicians and keep it a lower priority issue. Instead, they made the fatal, politically maladroit decision to take off that glove and reveal the stainless steel cyborg fist by starting banning mainstream commentators and politicians. They had the power but not the wisdom as to use it discreetly.

Big Tech are alleged to have sought to influence elections not just in the United States but in other countries such as Uganda, which has banned them until at least after the election. North Dakota already has legislative proposals (archive).

Every politician in the world now agrees there needs to be regulation to protect speech. In the UK and US this favours the right. Because, as soon as the government becomes the arbiter of who and what the social media companies can ban the 1st Amendment applies. In the UK, whilst our free speech laws are weaker they are still more permissive than Twitter. In a December judgement, British judges held that mis-gendering was protected speech (archive). In the UK, when a private institution is carrying out a public function, it is subject to the Human Rights Act 1998 (which includes the UK equivalent of the 1st Amendment).

Another group likely to benefit is #GamerGate. For years, they complained of social media censorship. Now, nearly every government in the world has rushed it to near the top of their agenda. The politicians have been hit where they live. Suddenly, the arguments of the likes of Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian seem immeasurably less convincing. Even in defeat, Trump may end up winning one of the most important fights in the free world today.

Share Button

40,000 Reasons to Praise the Lord: Smith v Whitbread Group PLC

Posted on by
1

A case update. I am suing a local pub in Welwyn Garden City, the Stanborough, pursuant to the Equality Act 2010 in the County Court. The named Defendant is the owner Whitbread Group PLC. On 6 January 2021 the court heard an application in public (with a member of the public in attendance), by the Defendant to strike out my claim. The application failed, leaving Whitbread to sip up most of their costs bill of over £38,000. They were instead ordered to pay my costs of £2,012 within 28 days, making a net loss of around £40,000 – perhaps a little less as some costs may apply to the trial. The costs of the interlocutory application are extinguished, meaning barring appeals, they will never get most of the £38K back even if they win at trial. Oops.

Picture of the Stanborough Pub

The Stanborough Pub, Welwyn Garden City, under darkened skies.

There are a number of legitimate public interest concerns about the case, the pub and the way the Defence has so far been conducted. For example, the average costs of an entire fast track county court case are around £15,000. The Defendant in this case tried to claim nearly £40K for a 3 hour hearing then when they failed, actually tried to argue it was unreasonable of me to seek my costs of legal advice! The judge, DDJ Octavia Knox Cartwright Ordered them to pay my costs instead and did not subtract a penny from my costs schedule.

The judge rejected the application by Whitbread to strike out my original pleadings, and their application to grant summary judgement on those pleadings. She also gave me permission to modify the pleadings by adding three half sentences. As the other side resisted my application, they were ordered to pay my costs. They can claim costs of replying to the three new half sentences, but reasonable costs arising from these are likely to be de minimis and as with all costs these can be assessed by a judge if Whitbread try to claim more. The judge held my claim has a, ‘realistic’ prospect of success.

As readers will know, I am legally qualified and have passed the LL.M LPC with a Commendation. Although I have not sought to use my LPC to practice as a solicitor, I have 10 years experience as a McKenzie Friend. In this case however, I sought a second opinion from a barrister as a sanity check on my work. I cannot share that advice as it would waive privilege, but what I can say is that I have been indemnified by a kindly philanthropist. This is a wealthy individual who considers the case has merit and is in the public interest, and has signed an agreement to pick up the tab if I lose. They have seen the advice, and are not feeling very concerned.

I am preparing a much longer article about the case because the effect of a public hearing is to put the entire bundle into the public domain under the collateral use rule. As a Christian I felt I should share this article with gratitude, but before publishing an article with more detail I want to give the Defendants pause to think this through and seek an amicable resolution.

Share Button

Raw Report with Sonia Poulton Fails to Take Off

Posted on by
1

[Update 20 November 2024 – Minor Edits and Update that Sonia Poulton was Eventually Dropped by the Platform]

In an episode of the Raw Report not so long ago, Sonia Poulton called this blog, “little read”. In some ways is fair comment, in relative terms MHN has a low circulation. At times, however, articles have had vast numbers of views and I have been surprised by the influence I have exercised. Even so, MHN is not my day job – it is a pastime that allows me to do some good but these days I have little time for. In recent years I have posted far less than once a week. Unlike myself, Sonia Poulton claims to be a professional journalist – so it is only fair to scrutinise the performance of her viewer figures.

A chart of Raw Report views by episode.

The Raw Report with Sonia Poulton was launched in September 2020. Since then, it has failed to take off, with views as measured from replays trending down to around 3,000 views per video. Picture used for the purposes of criticism and review.

Every Friday, Sonia Poulton livestreams the Raw Report. Shortly afterwards, a replay of the full episode is posted. The viewing figures for each episode are published. This can give a rough idea of viewership and trends. There are obvious caveats of course. Most views of livestream archives usually occur around the time of an episode but views can occur indefinitely so older videos will generally have an advantage. The number of views of an archive is not the same as the number of live viewers. There was a gap in the series when Sonia’s brother died.

Even so, after 8 episodes and 3 months, 5 days after the most recent episode it had 3,090 views. On 8 November 2020 episode 4 (uploaded on 6 November) had 3012 views. So it is not a huge change. Furthermore, not every view represents a person and not every view represents a person who watched the episode to the end. On 8 November Poulton had 8,473 subscribers and today she has 9,375. That is an increase of under 250 a week. It is not insignificant but it is not going viral.

Continue reading →

Share Button

Is Paedophilia Internet Troll @CraftyMuvva really so Crafty?

Posted on by
4

Esther Baker owes me money. On 3rd November 2020 Master Lisa Sullivan in the High Court ordered her to pay me £1,226.80 (order uploaded for transparency) and also struck out parts of her defence to my claim for libel and harassment. Predictably, Baker has been sniping and grumbling about it, making nasty remarks on Twitter to the extent that she dares to. What surprises me is the very small remaining rump of trolls who have time for her. One particularly vile individual is @CraftyMuvva, who is likely to face heavy scrutiny herself in the near future. Their latest ploy is to write unpleasant public posts on Twitter and then claim anyone who reads them is stalking them (evidence archive) by monitoring their communications.

The corrected strike-out and costs Order against Esther Baker.

The corrected strike-out and costs Order against Esther Baker.

For new readers, it is worth reminding them who Baker is. At the height of the paedophilia hysteria engendered by Exaro and Carl Beech, Esther Baker alleged that she was raped by a number of men on Cannock Chase as a child. After a police investigation into her ever-changing story, followed by CPS consideration, no charges were brought. Baker sought a review. The CPS responded to D1’s request under the Victim’s Right of Review Scheme. In that document, dated 15 March 2018, the CPS prosecutor says as follows, having reviewed all of the evidence collected in the case relating to all of the alleged rapes that there are “no witnesses”, “no medical or forensic evidence” and “no one else has come forward with a similar complaint”.

Continue reading →

Share Button

Hemming Brings it – Court Papers re Sonia Poulton Filed

Posted on by
2

This is just a brief note updating my previous articles about Sonia Poulton (1st here, 2nd here). At around 10:38am this morning proceedings were brought by John Hemming in his claim against Sonia Poulton. The fee has been paid and the filings accepted by the clerk. The court case is no longer a threat, no longer a possibility. It has been filed. Sonia Poulton has yet to be served or enter a defence, and it is now for a court to decide matters. However, she has been sent a receipt and copy of the final legal papers as a courtesy.

Sonia Poulton Video Statement

Sonia Poulton has issued an inflammatory and misleading ‘official statement’ on the dispute. Extracted still used for the purpose of criticism and review.

This will be a new development to Poulton, a figure who has faced legal threats for years but somehow avoided litigation. To me she seems to be a pathetic figure much like David Hencke, who humiliatingly settled Hemming’s libel claim against him in 2018. Once taken seriously by the national press, her career has followed a “this is spinal tap” model into self-publication. She has shaded into ever more dangerous territory and her recent podcast with Shaun Attwood has finally put her into deep waters.

Poulton now face the risk of further lawsuits. She has made public remarks about two supporters of Hemming, with the following words – “I’ve finally found out the reason why two creepy middle-age, childless men have been stalking me and survivors of child abuse for years. And I’m going to expose them,” (tweet) (archive). Her difficulty with this statement of course is that stalking is a crime. If the men can be identified, even by a small number of people, then they can sue her. In order to defend her statement, she might well have to prove that they are guilty of the offence for which they have not been convicted.

Share Button