[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.]

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.

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 […]”.

The difficulty with Twitter is that, even when matters are clear cut, their promises and reality rarely match up. Their unprofessionalism is legendary. Mark Zuckerberg famously described Twitter as a, “clown car” that crashed into a, “gold mine”. I myself left Twitter a few years ago due to their unprofessional behaviour. I had written and promoted an article about Sarah Jeong, in which I correctly pointed out that she doxed a rape victim. My article was in no way in breach of their rules, but nonetheless my accounts were suspended. After legal correspondence, they unsuspended me. Having been vindicated, I used the opportunity to leave.

Having released my usernames and left the platform, I later also had to take action to make them suspend people impersonating me using those old usernames. I have no confidence in Twitter’s professionalism at all and I have great sympathy for the victim in this case, whose PTSD and dyslexia make the difficult job of dealing with the vile company far more difficult.

I am relatively privileged having legal training and powerful friends. Many are not so fortunate. Twitter’s report form is a shoddy and inadequate joke. It only allows the reporting of 5 tweets at a time and does not allow the uploading of supporting documents. For example, “this tweet is in breach of the attached restraining Order” is likely to be a common use case, that should be supported. The company’s black box reporting system makes escalation almost impossible. It is far from accessible to the powerful, let alone to the disabled or to victims of domestic abuse.

So, last week I got in touch with named executives. I wrote to Vijaya Gadde (Legal, Policy, Trust and Safety Lead at Twitter), Del Harvey (née Alison Shea) (VP Trust and Safety), Sinéad McSweeney (VP Public Policy and Communications EMEA) and Karen White (Senior Director, Public Policy EMEA). I sent them a copy of the court judgement against Baker, the restraining Order Hemming has against her as well as some context. The response was bizarre and utterly unacceptable. Twitter responded with a patronising email, set out in full below, except I have blacked out the name of the abuse victim and email of the person I am corresponding with.

It appeared to state that Twitter only found 1 tweet in breach of their rules and then made vague threats towards me – appearing to allude to a defamation claim. After some thoughts, I decided to clarify precisely what they were on notice of. I politely replied, listing the URLs of the harassment tweets and cross-referencing them with the paragraphs of the court judgement finding those paragraphs were in fact targeted harassment. There are at least 23 tweets, still up, which the judge found harassing. Several of those were found to be racist. I pointed out to them that former MP John Hemming had receipt emails from his reports about the @esther9982 in 2017. I am aware of other complainants.

If Twitter never received any reports from the child abuse victim, well, they are on notice now with cross-reference to a harassment judgement expressly finding those tweets to be targeted, racist, harassment. They are on notice that Esther Baker has two restraining Orders against her as a result of her use of their service. (For that matter, her libel of former MP John Hemming is ‘fake news’).

I also drew Twitter’s attention to the revolting ‘content’ produced by some of Baker’s friends. Baker’s supporter Alan Goodwin, a Germany based employee of Miele, has made numerous posts sharing his views on the Jews. Again the content appears to breach Twitter’s terms of use. Goodwin has, for example, targeted female politicians of colour with racist and anti-Semitic allegations that they were conspiring with the Israeli government to cover up child abuse. It is essentially a modern restatement of the Blood Libel, the medieval slur that Jews drank the blood of Christian children, only with paedophilia. Baker’s supporter Dr Jacqui Dillon, has many vile tweets, including falsely accusing a disabled homeless man of being a paedophile.

I used a legal off-the-shelf email tracker that proves my emails were read. Curiously, Sinéad McSweeney and Karen White sent out-of-office emails, but the messages I had sent them were read hundreds of times. Over 1400 times in Sinéad’s case. Twitter clearly thought carefully about this and it is well known that the final word at Twitter on what is acceptable comes from Vijaya and from Del / Alison. Sinéad McSweeney and Karen White however would presumably have input into whether Twitter accepts UK and EU court judgements.

At the time of writing the tweets are still up and the perpetrators have not been banned.

Twitter have thought about it, and decided not to apply their clearly stated policies. If they did not know in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 or 2019 they know now, and they either do not accept the British court judgement that the tweets are targeted harassment, or they have decided they do not care. They have in effect backed the behaviour by allowing it to remain online and the perpetrators on their service.

Twitter have thought about it and decided to allow tweets that two courts found were racist stalking. They have also chosen to allow the claim that Jews conceal child sexual abuse within their community instead of reporting it, that a Conservative UK minister conspired with the Israeli government to conceal child sexual abuse and that Jews are nepotistic. They have allowed Jacqui Dillon to defame a mentally ill homeless man.

Why? The decision makes no sense in terms of Twitter’s Rules nor in commercial terms in terms of their reputation.

Why? Some suspect deliberate malice. Twitter has often been accused of political bias. It is said that Left-wing perpetrators are treated leniently and right-wing rule-breakers are treated harshly. The perpetrators in this case, Esther Baker in particular, are associated with the Labour Party.

I asked Twitter the following questions –

1. A court has held that Ms Baker engaged in racist stalking using Twitter. Why has her account not been banned?

[No answer from Twitter]

2. Twitter was of course put on notice of the tweets by my letter of 7 April 2020 but does not appear to accept the court judgement, stating that only 1 of the many tweets found to be harassment breached its rules. I have now sent you the URLs and cross-reference to the judgement. Can you confirm you do not accept the court ruling?

[No answer from Twitter]

3. Baker actively attempted to cooperate with the Catholic Priest who raped the child abuse victim and falsely and maliciously accused the victim of perjury on Twitter. Why does Twitter allow itself to be used for criminal assistance offered to child rapists?

[No answer from Twitter]

4. Will Alan Goodwin be banned for his prolific anti-Semitic tweets including racist and anti-Semitic allegations [a government Minister] conspired with the Israeli government to conceal child abuse?

[No answer from Twitter]

The important thing about this case is that it can be proven that Twitter’s legal team were on notice, and that named executives were on notice. If nothing else, they had my letters of 7 April 2020 and 10 April 2020. For all practical purposes Twitter have chosen to support and enable an exceptional racist stalker. They have chosen to allow the content complained of to stay up even though a court found it put a child abuse victim’s life at risk.

So, what can be done? Obviously, we have been suing a number of institutions that have behaved inappropriately regarding Baker. The National Health Service has paid me £3,500 for hurt feelings for alleged breach of the GDPR and confidence as set out it my prior article. Staffordshire Police are of course being sued by John Hemming for £10 million. Proceedings have been issued and a stay application has been agreed between the parties whilst an external investigation takes place. Staffordshire are now subject to an external investigation by Gwent Police, including John’s complaints and my own.

Why not sue Twitter? There are obvious heads of claim under the GDPR and a straightforward harassment claim. The US has laws that make companies like Twitter immune to liability. However, like Google, Twitter trades in the UK. It has people and assets here. It has customers here. It is established that UK and EU law can be enforced against them. Google was of course famously sued in the ‘Right to be Forgotten’ case. In principle, there is no reason that Twitter cannot be sued for damages if it does not delete inaccurate data. Once it is on notice that posts are harassing, I see no reason in principle it cannot be jointly liable in harassment if it leaves them up.

German law has harsh provisions relating to social media companies that do not promptly remove hate speech. We are actively looking into ensuring those provisions are used in relation to Alan Goodwin, who lives in Germany.

Furthermore, no-platforming and public shaming are options. The fact that these are usually done by Twitter in no way means that they are immune to it – especially with Parliamentary backing. For example, Vijaya is a co-founder of a firm called #Angels. Will her co-founders, Jana Messerschmidt, Chloe Sladden, Katie Stanton, April Underwood, and Jessica Verrilli, want their brand tainted by someone who has done this? Do they feel comfortable with someone who has decided that the Blood Libel can be reposted in modern form on her platform? Will they want to be named and profiled, pictured next to the racist tweets Vijaya has permitted to remain? Will they want to be subjected to Parliamentary scrutiny? Would they like to be named in an Early Day Motion? One wonders how the trustees of NYU Law and Mercy Corps might feel at their brand being tainted by such wrong-headed approaches to Blood Libel and child rape.

Twitter needs to clean itself up or face scrutiny and litigation. Vijaya Gadde, Alison Shea, Sinéad McSweeney and Karen White are not anonymous and if they choose to act in a vile way, they will face the consequences of their choices. If they choose to allow and empower stalking, abuse, racism and anti-Semitism, how are they morally different from the stalker, the abuser, the racist and the anti-Semite?

Readers who feel strongly can of course send polite emails to vijaya@twitter.com, del@twitter.com, sinead@twitter.com and kwhite@twitter.com. If you do choose to email, please choose to be respectful and lawful no matter how distressing the behaviour of the abusers has been.

[UPDATE – Response from Twitter Received 14 April 2020]

I sent Twitter a draft of this article on 13 April 2020 (which was not a holiday in the US). I set a deadline of 5pm 14 April 2020. The reason for the deadline is that it was a holiday in the UK on 13 April 2020 so I wanted them to have a full working day. As it had been a holiday, I also offered them an extension of time. I received silence. However the tracking tool I used showed that, by the end of yesterday, my article had been read 64 times. On publishing the article I notified Twitter and received the attached email, complaining it was a holiday. Given they knew they could just ask for an extension – I consider this highly inappropriate and disingenuous. Nonetheless, Twitter promises an update by the end of the week. John Hemming can prove he first complained about @esther9982 in 2017.