Category Archives: Equality

Twitter and Bristows in Humiliating Libel Climb Down

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On Friday night, 1st May 2020 I received a letter from UK solicitors Bristows instructed by Twitter. They demanded I take down my article of 14 April 2020 about Twitter, claiming it was defamatory of unnamed staff. Now, after I wrote back pointing out I was legally qualified and identifying their procedural errors, they claim this was just an informational comment, and not a libel threat at all and they do not have to reply to my requests for information as they are not proceeding with the Pre-Action Protocol they have to follow in England before suing me.

Extract from Bristows' Email of 6 May 2020

Bristows now claim they were never threatening to sue me on behalf of Twitter. I understand that Robert Graham and Alex Keenlyside are responsible. Image adjusted to show headed paper logo above the relevant paragraph.

In England, the Civil Procedure rules require that before suing someone you write them a letter and try to resolve the claim with them. In libel, the applicable rule is the Pre-action Protocol for Media and Communications Claims. If a party fails to follow the rules, the court can impose tough sanctions like ordering them to pay some or all of the other side’s legal fees even if they ‘win’ and the other party ‘loses’.

As pointed out in my previous article, in their letter to me, Bristows were missing a lot of important information such as (for example) the name of any natural person claimant, details of the alleged serious harm and other elements required by UK law. Of particular importance the claimant has to set out which facts they dispute and why. Therefore I sent them a request for information under the protocol to include the missing information. Bristows now claim they were never following the protocol at all and so do not have to make any disclosures. It follows that there is no intent to sue me at all. I will still consider complaints and further letters with an open mind but in the absence of the requested information see no reason to remove or modify my article.

That is, my article naming Vijaya Gadde and Del Harvey (née Alison Shea) and stating that they had intentionally and in breach of Twitter’s supposed policy allowed vile harassment / stalking of a child abuse victim and anti-Semitic hate speech. My article also stated that, in effect, they were backing the anti-Semite and the stalker by allowing them to continue to post. I am not in receipt of any clear factual statement from Twitter setting out any basis as to why those allegations are wrong.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once famously described Twitter as being like a clown car that crashed in a gold-mine. Apparently, this is also true of their lawyers.

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Twitter Threatens to Sue! Del Harvey and Vijaya Gadde Double Down

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Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg once famously described Twitter as being like a clown car that crashed in a gold-mine. Their latest antics, involving their lawyers at Bristows, include writing me one of the worst ‘libel’ letters I have ever seen. The specific lawyers on the case are Alex Keenlyside and Robert Graham. I reproduce the relevant parts below. Then I school them on procedure and more importantly the substantive facts of their case.

Bristows Libel 2020-05-03

Bristows’ letter to my mind is deficient in law. I understand that Robert Graham and Alex Keenlyside are responsible. Image adjusted to show logo above the relevant paragraph.

I received a letter just past 8pm on Friday night. It is a trashy tactic solicitors use that works with many people. However, although I do not practice as a solicitor I have passed the exams (LL.M LPC Commendation) and have nearly 9 years experience as a McKenzie Friend. I have written the pleadings of multiple libel cases so late night letters are less impressive to me, especially given the obvious, negligent and improper failure in this one to comply with the relevant UK law, the Civil Procedure Rules.

Much of the letter is a request for information. Twitter asks for court documents relating to the recent court case in which Esther Baker was found liable for racist harassment because of various proposed legal claims against it, in multiple jurisdictions. The last paragraph however is a demand I remove an article, which is said to be defamatory. Twitter are concerned with my article of 14 April 2020, headlined, “Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijay Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist”. So far they have not sought to challenge my article, “Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members”.

The article complained of referred to Twitter’s decision not to remove proven racist stalker Esther Baker’s account nor the tweets held by a judge to be racist stalking. The same article complained of Twitter’s failure to remove anti-Semitic material posted by a man named Alan Goodwin. As previously covered on MHN, Esther Baker has been successfully sued by former MP John Hemming and a child abuse victim who MHN is anonymising as a courtesy. Twitter, of course, has rules against racism and ‘targeted harassment’ so one would think in light of the lengthy judgement to the effect that Baker engaged in racist targeted harassment over a period of years the issue would be a no-brainer. Nope. “Clown Car”!

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Lewisham Deptford Labour Youth Officer Verity Nevitt and Sister are being Sued for Libel, Harassment and Misuse of Private Information. Tweets Admit Drug Abuse and Paid Sugarbaby Sleaze

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As a proven victim of sex crime (proven in a court, not a Tumblr post) I obviously sympathise with people who feel that attempts have been made to gag them. Equally however, there is little more vile than a false allegator or someone who wastes law enforcement time. Aside from causing huge distress to the falsely accused (who have rights too, of course) it draws resources from real victims. If a person in one place wastes the time of specially trained officers, somewhere a woman or a child may be raped with no redress. Such people deserve the harshest condemnation. The foreseeable consequence of squandering police resources is the image of a vile rapist or paedophile thrusting into a screaming victim. It is that simple. Verity Nevitt, Youth Officer of Lewisham Deptford Labour, is being sued, accused with her sister of making false allegations.

Verity Nevitt Seeking Arrangement2019-10-21

Verity admits to being a former member of Seeking Arrangement, a site known for prostitution. She also muses about joining the website, ‘OnlyFans.com’. Verity has denied offering sexual services in an email, but has not stated what services she did provide or what services she contemplated providing on OnlyFans. Click for full size.

The Youth Officer for Lewisham Deptford Labour Party, Verity Nevitt, is currently subject to a High Court restraining Order along with her sister Lucy. A summary of the case is that Lucy and Verity are being sued for alleged harassment / stalking of a male Lucy and Verity accuse of rape and sexual assault. They are also sued for libel and misuse of private information. It is important to note that the case has not yet been tried – so the allegations are not yet decided. However, at least one judge thought there were grounds to grant an interim Order.

The Order restrains Lucy and Verity (or anyone else) from naming the man they have accused or providing information likely to identify him. Because of the Order protecting him, I can say no more about his identity. The Order is interim, and may be discharged – an application has been made and Mrs Justice Steyn is currently considering the case following a hearing on Thursday 30th April 2020. I will be interested to read the judgement. Steyn J did a very detailed and thorough job in Baker v Hemming.

Lucy and Verity spent the night with the man after an evening where it is said that they had consumed alcohol and drugs. The dispute is that they say that he raped Lucy and sexually assaulted Verity. He has produced texts and other communications he says prove this is not the case and in which they he asserts they admitted nothing happened. Having seen the texts and posts, police have dropped the rape and sexual assault investigation.

Verity and Lucy have expressly waived their anonymity as alleged victims of sex crime and demanded they be named. They have named and pictured themselves online as the ‘victims’ in the case. After a hearing today, Mrs Justice Steyn made an interim Order that they could be named in relation to the proceedings provided that no details are published likely to identify their alleged victim. This is brave given their copious social media posts admitting to drug use and discussing mental illness. In Verity’s case, she has admitted to institutionalisation and self-harm. She has also admitted to membership of the website SeekingArrangement.com and mused about creating an account on the website OnlyFans.com (archive).

Seeking Arrangement (now known as ‘Seeking’) is well known as one where young women can arrange to meet an older man … for a very large fee. It is generally considered synonymous with prostitution, although not all of the companions offer sexual services – some insisting the sex is merely coincidental and others offering only platonic escorting. Many would say even the latter is sex work. Regardless of what services they offer, women who participate are called, “Sugar Babies”, by the site. Verity denies sex work, but has not clarified further as to what services she claims she did provide (or contemplated providing in the case of OnlyFans). In an email, Verity asked me to research the site, so I did. Vanity Fair published quite a detailed piece on Seeking Arrangement, in which it detailed the experiences of women who could charge as much as $700 per hour for sex (archive).

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Labour’s Secret Deal with Twitter and Facebook to Surveil its own members

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Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Event

Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech event. Would she be such a popular speaker if Twitter’s approach to real time monitoring of political speech was widely known? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

A leaked internal Labour Party report has hit the headlines (archive) because of lurid statements allegedly made by staff. What has been missed however, receiving barely any coverage, is an apparent admission that, using a secret deal with Facebook and Twitter, the Labour Party has been running automated surveillance on its own members. If true, this is manifestly unlawful – each member affected would almost certainly have a valid claim in damages under Data Protection legislation.

[UPDATE 21 April 2020, 18:10 BST – Have received a response from Twitter, below]

In the furore about the leaked Labour report, many commentators have focused on the supposedly racist, sexist, and / or ableist remarks. There is also the apparent dishonest treacherous plotting. It is important to remember of course that this report was produced by a bitterly infighting party and its contents are disputed. Former staff who were criticised claim that accusations about their conduct were never put to them.

MHN has a copy of the report and leaving all that aside however, this passage leaps out –

Labour Twitter Trot Hunt Software Admission

Labour had automated software that reconciled its privileged access to Twitter and Facebook data with their membership database to identify and monitor member accounts.

It is worth turning to the Data Protection Principles set out in the Data Protection Act 1998, which was in force at the time (replaced by the EU General Data Protection Regulation and Data Protection Act 2018 in May 2018). The principles were set out in section 4 (archive) and Schedule 1 (archive).

Of especial relevance, these principles included processing data, “fairly”, holding data that was “not excessive”. Fairness usually means notifying members of the way their data will be used. A quick glance at Labour’s current terms on its, ‘Join’ page does say that email addresses will be used to contact members. It says nothing about consenting to Orwellian real time monitoring for wrongthink.

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Twitter’s Del Harvey / Alison Shea and Vijaya Gadde Openly Back Child Rape Stalker and Anti-Semite Racist

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Defended banner for articles defended in court

[UPDATE – 17 August 2022. Esther Baker sued over this article in High Court Case QB-2020-001013. She lost. The court granted both summary judgement and strike-out finding the claim had no realistic prospect of success. No other person mentioned sued and the time limit has elapsed. Judgement here. My follow-up article here. This article has been added to the “DEFENDED!” category and readers may rely on it.]

Vijaya Gadde at a Fortune Event

Vijaya Gadde, Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter, at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech event. Would she be such a popular speaker if she was properly no-platformed due to her allowing vile stalking and racism against a child rape victim and anti-Semitism by the perpetrator’s friends? Picture by Photograph by Kevin Moloney/Fortune Brainstorm TECH. (NC License here).

Imagine you were raped as a child by a paedophile Priest. Then imagine that years later, as the trial of the priest took place you were subject to a campaign of racist stalking by a, “particularly malevolent”, vile and mentally ill harasser. The stalking puts your health and life at risk. Eventually, the Priest is convicted and the stalker is bankrupted and made subject to a lifelong restraining Order. Both verdicts are upheld on appeal. Now imagine, that an international social media company Twitter helps and empowers your stalker, who has been associated with prominent Labour MPs like Jess Phillips, and refuses to remove their stalking material, apparently contrary to its own rules.

[UPDATE From Twitter Below – 14 April 2020]

This of course is a real story. Esther Baker was recently bankrupted and made subject to a lifelong restraining Order for the racist stalking of a child abuse victim. Baker is of course publicly known because she was one of the VIP paedophile accusers associated with Exaro News, like Carl Beech. She received support from Labour MPs and was even invited to the House of Commons by Jess Phillips MP. Ironically Phillips is now the Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding.

The judge really did call Baker, “particularly malevolent”. The restraining Order is one of two such Orders she has received because of course she has also been restrained from repeating her, “untrue” allegations about former MP John Hemming. Of course County Court judges see lots of stalkers, family cases and domestics so a finding that stalking is particularly malevolent is saying a lot. Baker was so depraved she even tried to contact the paedophile priest – to try to undermine his conviction! It borders on the immortal line, “So, we got a once in a lifetime, top of the line looney tuney”, from the movie Basic Instinct. Except of course that Baker, who admits to hearing voices, is no Sharon Stone.

Esther Baker is a Malevolent Racist

The express findings of the County Court judge agreeing Baker behaved in a “vindictive, “obsessive” and “malevolent” way. MHN has erased the barrister’s name to protect the anonymity of the victim of Baker’s years of racist stalking. If only Vijaya Gadde, Del Harvey (Alison Shea), Karen White and Sinéad McSweeney over at Twitter would protect them too!

Whilst Baker has occasionally, grudgingly, removed some tweets she has not removed most of the stalking tweets including some that may put her in breach of the various court Orders against her. So, needless to say, Twitter were contacted by some of her victims. John Hemming had also been in contact with Twitter and can produce email receipts from their report form going as far back as 2017. As a result of a number of controversies, Twitter has enacted a number of supposed rules. Targeted harassment is supposedly prohibited (archive). Racist harassment is supposedly prohibited (archive). In the context of hate of protected groups, the Twitter rules state that, “We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs […]”.

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Merseycare Pay Damages Over Esther Baker, Baker Loses Racism Appeal

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The Witchfinder has received £3,500 in damages, an admission of liability and an apology from Merseycare NHS Foundation Trust on the basis that they revealed to Esther Baker that he had raised confidential safeguarding concerns about her. There is no confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement – I am free to tell all. Meanwhile, Esther Baker has lost her appeal against a finding she harassed a proven victim of child abuse, making racist tweets and apparently contacting the victim’s paedophile abuser – with a view to helping the abuser overturn their conviction.

RemittanceSlipMerseycare

Sam Smith, the editor of MHN, has received £3,500 damages for the disclosure of confidential information by Merseycare NHS Foundation Trust. Click for full size.

In late 2018, I raised serious concerns about the well-being of Esther Baker. I wrote to her psychiatrist, Dr Kate Wood and to executives at her local NHS Trust.

All of my concerns have been realised – I warned Esther Baker was at risk of large costs Orders in court proceedings she has unwisely brought and defended. The Orders were made. I warned Baker was at risk of bankruptcy. She has been bankrupted. I warned Baker was at risk of her job. She has lost her job. I warned of further civil and criminal legal troubles – they are in process. I warned Baker was a danger to others – the County Court has found her liable for stalking, the High Court for defamation. In both cases lifelong restraining Orders have been made.

Nearly every risk has materialised.

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Alexis Kennedy and Lottie Bevan Should Sue Vile Laurie Penny: Happy to Help Pro-bono

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After the recent tragic death of Alec Holowka, most gaming journalists have had the decency or at least self-preservation instinct to allow a period of graceful silence to fall. Holowka was a game developer who was accused of sexual abuse and imprisonment by Zoe Quinn. Not long afterwards, his former co-workers claimed they could ‘corroborate’ the allegations. Shortly afterward, he killed himself. When facts emerged to show the accusations likely false and the ‘corroboration’ anything but, an uneasy silence fell. Except, apparently, for Wired’s Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) who backed the Holowka allegations and has been attacking the girlfriend of another accusee on Twitter (archive) for daring to defend him. I am making a public offer of pro-bono support to Alexis and Lottie to start suing people.

PennyAbuser

Penny Red attacks Lottie Bevan for daring to dispute the Twitter mob allegations.

It is worth briefly looking at the Holowka case. Per MHN previous coverage here and here a casual legal analysis of the so-called corroboration show it was anything but. The co-workers could back up that he was hard to work with and unstable – but not that he imprisoned Zoe Quinn and assaulted her by penetration. Then, historic tweets emerged that directly contradicted Quinn’s account. She had been going out to meetups whilst supposedly imprisoned and engaged in a last minute game crunch with Holowka, at a time when in her account she was allegedly fleeing in fear.

Quinn’s historic tweets were revealed by articles on Post Millennial (archive) and MHN. Quinn has also been credibly accused of abuse by four unconnected men and is facing questions as to the whereabouts of $85000 Kickstarter money. She promised to deliver her Kickstarter by 2017 and it is now 2019. The allegations against Holowka seem to coincide with awkward questions being asked of Quinn at a time when her income from Patreon has fallen to a fraction of what it was a few years ago.

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Zoe Quinn’s Lethal Lies Must End Her Career, Plus Those of Supporters Jess Conditt and Laurie Penny

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Zoë_Quinn_(2015)_(cropped)

Zoe Quinn image via Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Recently, I reported on the tragic death of Alec Holowka, a troubled game developer who killed himself after Zoe Quinn made allegations about him on Twitter. My initial articles [1] and [2] covered the weaknesses in her story and the false claims of corroboration by journalists and Holowka’s despicable former business partner Scott Benson. Since then, a site called the Post Millennial has disproven at least two of her allegations based on her tweets (archive). Some have questioned the veracity of the screenshots on the Post Millennial, but I have an independent source with access to Zoe’s Twitter and have confirmed these tweets are still there and have seen them with my own eyes. Below I even include some tweets not in the Post Millennial’s article. It is their scoop, but I can totally confirm and expand on it. My source still has access so anyone with an interest in searching her tweets please mail me, contact per the ‘Tip Us Off’ page.

The Claim – ‘physically confined’

In the post below, Zoe Quinn claimed that –

  • she agreed to visit Alec Holowka for two weeks only
  • Holowka promised to buy her a ticket back after two weeks, but reneged
  • she was physically confined to his apartment
Zoe Quinn Claims

Zoe Quinn’s allegations, now proven to be contradicted by her own words.

In fact, her tweets below prove that –

  • the original timespan of the trip was unspecified (she wrote, ‘??? weeks’) and this disproves the claim it was set at two weeks (and the associated claim Alec promised to buy her return ticket)
  • She repeatedly went out, even after the first two weeks during the period of alleged confinement

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When the Corpse is Barely Cold: Scott Benson and Engadget’s Jess Conditt Vilify Tragic Alec Holowka

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JessConditt

Engadget Senior Editor Jess Conditt. Her vile and uncritical coverage of Zoe Quinn’s unproven allegations burdens her with moral culpability for Alec Holowka’s unimaginable suffering and the death of this vulnerable, tragic and disabled man.

Speaking ill of the dead has always been thought of as wrong. A thing inherently bad and a sign of poor character. So it is unsurprising that the despicable Scott Benson and Jess Conditt have been doing that to Alec Holowka in a desperate and futile attempt to salvage their ruined reputations.

Alec Holowka was a successful game developer who tragically suffered from mental illness. Despite his disabilities, he had made a success of his life until it was cruelly taken away from him by Zoe Quinn. Quinn is a controversial figure in the gaming industry. In 2014 a former boyfriend called Eron Gjoni accused her of abuse including various kinds of sexual misconduct. Another man, Wolf Wozniak, bravely came forward and accused her of sexual harassment.

Quinn applied for a restraining order against Gjoni which was granted. However when he appealed, backed by donations from the community she applied to have the order vacated and records of it expunged rather than face him in court as I reported in my article, ‘Epic Gjoni Win‘. She did not want the substance of their dispute argued.

As my previous article sets out, Quinn is presently under pressure to explain how she spent $85,000 she took in a Kickstarter campaign for a game she has yet to release. It was due in 2017. As a key anniversary approached she came out on Twitter to accuse Holowka of imprisonment, sexual assault by penetration and emotional abuse. Left wing media including the horrific Jess Conditt piled on, ignoring Quinn’s history, court failure and financial pressure. Holowka’s so-called friends at the gaming cooperative Night in the Woods cut ties, claiming that they had “[…] corroborated just about all of it […]” (archive). So suddenly Alec became a pariah, under attack from all sides by Quinn’s unthinking, thuggish followers on Twitter.

Tragically, Holowka killed himself and of course, as I pointed out in my last article, Benson’s claims of corroboration could not possibly be true. The reason? Zoe herself had admitted there were no witnesses. She said that Holowka acted “normal” when other people were arround. The awful cravenness of Holowka’s decision to sever ties with a colleague and his misleading statements about the controversy no doubt contributed to Alec’s decision to end his life.

Now however, Benson has gone further. In a lengthy, near ten-thousand-word Medium post (archive) he sets out his alleged experience with Alec. He posted a link on Twitter, retweeted by Conditt. It is a sickening and, in this context, heinously misleading tarring of his friend’s memory. The friend he betrayed.

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Blood on their Hands: Verizon’s Jess Conditt, Dana Wollman, Guru Gowrappan, Hans Vestberg and the Death of Alec Holowka

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On August 31st Alec Holowka died. It is believed this vulnerable and mentally ill man took his own life after allegations of abuse were made about him on Twitter and Instagram by ‘game’ ‘developer’ Zoe Quinn, causing him to be dismissed from his job and targeted by a mob of Twitter vigilantes. The unproven accusations against him have been given enough oxygen – this article is the first in a series forensically analysing Quinn’s allegations, her unintentional and damning admissions and the wrongdoing of those reporters who irresponsibly reported on the matter. I begin with Engadget / Verizon’s Jess Conditt and her editor Dana Wollman. Credit is also due to Verizon Media CEO Guru Gowrappan and his boss Verizon Inc CEO Hans Vestberg. In my view Jess Conditt and Dana Wollman, whilst legally innocent of murder, are morally guilty of his death. They are abusers who contributed to the vigilante mob that drove him to his death, whilst Vestberg and Gowrappan have yet to take action to condemn them.

Hans_Vestberg_2018_Blood

Hans Vestberg, CEO of Verizon, leads a company tainted by the blood of tragic Alec Holowka. Will he show leadership and make things right?

I am a UK law blogger who has passed the solicitor’s (attorney’s) exams called the LL.M LPC. I have not sought to practice as a lawyer, my day job being Director of an IT company, but I have nearly 10 years experience helping people in court, only ever pro-bono as a McKenzie Friend. In the reported case Re TL EWCOP 1 [2017] I was praised by Mr Justice Baker for my work in a case in which a man known as PL had been exonerated of abuse, a restraining order lifted and had contact reinstated with his disabled daughter. Recently I helped former MP John Hemming win two libel cases and in a third he has obtained a substantial costs order against a woman called Esther Baker who wrongly accused him of cult rape. The costs order and resulting bankruptcy petition against Baker are here. I know a lot about challenging false allegations.

It is well known that Zoe Quinn was accused of sexual impropriety by her former boyfriend Eron Gjoni here (archive) and of sexual harassment by Wolf Wozniak (archive). Gjoni accused her of obtaining his consent to unprotected sex by deceitfully claiming she was faithful to him. Wozniak accused her of ‘harassment’ although to be fair his allegations are regrettably unparticularised. One thing I hate more than people who take their accusations to social media and not the authorities is people who make vague allegations without details that can be proven or falsified.

After Holowka’s death Quinn has deleted her allegations against him and deactivated her Twitter account. However, Quinn’s Twitter allegations have been collected in this archive whilst her Instagram allegations have been collected here. A point that leapt out at me from Quinn’s allegations that has not been picked up elsewhere is that if we believe her evidence there are at least two more men, unconnected men, who have made allegations against her of sexual wrongdoing. Four unconnected accusers is a sign there is likely something to these allegations.

Frame_1_QaA

This is Frame 1 of Quinn’s Instagram allegations. If true, there is a man she had a sexual encounter with that she claims is sexual assault and he made contemporary complaints she had falsely accused him. This is a third unconnected accuser of Quinn. We will call him QaA (Quinn accuser ‘A’).

In this Instagram image Quinn identified a man with whom she had a sexual encounter. She frames it as assault but admits that he also accused her, contemporaneously not years later on social media, of making false allegations. We will call him QaA (Quinn accuser ‘A’). If we accept her account that he exists, he is the third unconnected male to make allegations of abuse against Quinn.

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