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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

internet troll jailed - a bit ott?

204 replies

netherlee · 13/09/2011 23:30

Troll jailed

OK this man is depraved and he deserved to be punished, but AIBU to think prison is a bit far? Then again, MN trolls take note. There are consequences if you cross the line.

OP posts:

StarlightMcKenzie · 14/09/2011 13:16

Children in special schools are not punished. Their behaviour is shaped.

That means thinking carefully about what the consequence will be in order to reduce the chances of the behaviour occuring again.

EightiesChick · 14/09/2011 13:25

Starlight what happens if a child in that kind of school consistently resists that shaping and refuses to follow the modelling of good behaviour being offered to them? What happens then? I am genuinely interested.

StarlightMcKenzie · 14/09/2011 13:27

Then the teacher is sent on some CPD, I would hope.

silverfrog · 14/09/2011 13:28

you change tack, eightieschick.

as I mentioned in my earlier post - what happens if the punishment does not work? do the punishments keep getting increased and escalated as a (hopefully) bigger deterrent?

if a child is not learning something, it is the teacher at fault, not the child. and it is the teacher who has to take charge, and change the way the lesson is being delivered. not expect the child to suddenly "get it" through a series of punishments.

festi · 14/09/2011 13:30

I think there are too many assumptions on this thread of what ASD is and how it affects individuals, there is a alot.people with AS can not....people with AS do not...people with AS are unable to.....what is missing is some people with AS. his crime or behaviour may not have been because of him having an ASD.

kelly2000 · 14/09/2011 13:30

As many have said aspergers covers a huge range of severity. The people I know with it are all functioning adults with very high levels of education, have friends, full time professional jobs, and several have partners and children. None of them have mental health issues It is insulting that some people seem to think that because they have aspergers anything they do wrong or that goes wrong for them must be because they have aspergers. It is a discriminatory assumption regardless of whether those making the assumption think they are on their side.

His legal team have not indicated he did what he did because he had aspergers, there is no reason for people on here to assume his legal team got it wrong.
As for lack of empathy, nearly all seriel killers have been found to have a lack of empathy, it is one of the feature sof a sociopath I believe, it does not excuse what they did either. He knew what he did was wrong. I think letting him off with punishment simply because he happened to have aspergers when aspergers has not been found to be the reason he behaved like this is stigmatizing people with aspergers.

festi · 14/09/2011 13:33

x post kelly, but put sop much better than me.

kelly2000 · 14/09/2011 13:33

Can I just clarify that I am not in any way claiming those with aspergers are sociopaths, I am just pointing out that a lack of empathy does not excuse you from doing something you know is wrong.
I am aslo not saying that people with aspergers are all like my friends, I was just using them to illistrate that you cannot make assumptions about a person based on the fact they have aspergers.

Kladdkaka · 14/09/2011 14:37

There is a widely help belief amongst doctors and the general population that people with AS lack empathy. Lack of empathy however is NOT one of the diagnostic criteria of AS and people with AS have been arguing that it is not true for years. Now it looks like science is starting to catch up. Research in Switzerland indicates that it's the opposite and that AS means too much empathy which causes emotional shutdown as a coping method.

LeninGrad · 14/09/2011 14:40

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Kladdkaka · 14/09/2011 14:45

My daughter is very obviously like that too. Most of the time she appears to be just like everyone else and people do not know she is autistic. In an emotionally charged situation, such as when someone is ill or upset (or heaven forbid a cat is hurt) you can actually see the shutters come down on her face. Then she looks very much autistic and will act like she doesn't care or isn't interested.

KeepInMind · 14/09/2011 14:46

What a vile person I think he deserves all he got

Thumbwitch · 14/09/2011 14:47

Kladdaka, that is indeed interesting! Purely for interest's sake, do you have a link to that? I'd like to pass it on to a friend :)

Kladdkaka · 14/09/2011 15:08

Thumbwitch I think this is the one. Sorry, I don't have time to read it through properly to check as I'm supposed to at least be looking like I'm trying to do my homework.

Thumbwitch · 14/09/2011 15:11

Thanks Kladdaka! I'll have to look at it tomorrow when I can get a go on DH's laptop (I have pdf ishoos - don't ask - they're not simple).

StarlightMcKenzie · 14/09/2011 15:20

I remember an awful incident that I experienced myself.

A friend was telling me that one of her friends that I did not know was out with a baby and a set of traffic lights fell into the buggy and killed the 6 week old baby.

I still can't work out quite why it happened but I giggled.

Now, I had two very young children myself at that time and I suspect that giggling was a way of distancing a reality that I really could not handle imagining. I am quite shocked at my own reaction. I certainly did NOT find it funny in anyway.

Thumbwitch · 14/09/2011 15:22

What a horrible experience for you, Starlight - all round! God, what a shock of a story that would have been though.

reallytired · 14/09/2011 15:25

People with autism are capable of bad things. It is not right to allow AS to be an excuse for anything. People with aspergers can and do learn suitable boundaries with the right help. This man does not have severe learning difficulties.

It is rare for someone with autism to behave like this. It is far more common for someone with autism to be the victim of cyberbullying.

The man commited a similar offence in 2009. He knew he was breaking the law. He has normal intelligence.

At what point do you stop the bleeding hearts and think of the victims. Putting him in jail is the only sure way to stop him going on the internet.

With the right to be free comes the responsiblity to stay within the law.

WhereYouLeftIt · 14/09/2011 15:33

I also believe he must have known what he did would be considered wrong by other people. As well as the previous caution, he also tried to cover his tracks. From today's Independent - "Duffy, who had posted the images using false details, was traced by police through information from his internet service provider and arrested." Plus, some of his offences related to video he'd made. Now I'm guessing it takes time and effort to do those, so can you really call that a problem with impulse control? Impulse is posting a comment, not making a video.

Thumbwitch · 14/09/2011 15:46

have found this on empathy imbalance - it is saying what you were saying, Kladdaka - what is very interesting is the 2nd paragraph on p 493:
"There is evidence that people with antisocial personality disorder have
strong CE ability (Blair et al., 1996; Richell et al., 2003) but low sensitivity to
others? distress (Blair, Jones, Clark, & Smith, 1997) and happiness (Deeley
et al., 2006). Recent research also seems to confirm that a minority of people diagnosed with Asperger syndrome are callous and have both a CE deficit and a substantial EE deficit (Rogers, Viding, Blair, Frith, & Happe, 2006)."
(my bolding) where CE = cognitive empathy and EE = emotional empathy.

Very interesting indeed. Still doesn't excuse what he did, because he still caused untold distress and harm to those people - and sociopaths get put away for the damage they do to people as well - but it does provide a potential for more insight. And suggests that his brain is wired that way, so in fact a jail term may make bugger all difference to his outlook.

Pendeen · 14/09/2011 15:57

YANBU

To send someone to jail for what he did is ridiculous.

Prisons are overflowing to the extent that real criminals are being released early.

mrjellykeepskidsquiet · 14/09/2011 15:59

I think it was right...I just can't feel any sympathy for him at all. The things he said were vile, and the way he targeted the families doesn't suggest he had no idea what he was doing.

At some point it has to be about the victims and not whatever tired old excuse the person who has caused so much harm can come up with. This is not the first time he has been warned either, and maybe he is just a nasty cunt when alls said and done.

spiderpig8 · 14/09/2011 16:04

Of couse he knew what he was doing!

'"help me mummy, it's hot in hell".

FGS that is so calculated to cause the maximum distress possible.What a low life nasty piece of work i truly hop he has some good pasting in prison to experience a tiny % of teh anguish he has caused her parents!!

StarlightMcKenzie · 14/09/2011 16:18

Oh, and here comes our resident offensive disablist poster.....

I'm off. Thanks for the discussion the rest of you.

kelly2000 · 14/09/2011 16:37

spiderpig,
Not only did he write the message "help me mummy it is hot in hell", he also timed it and put it up on mother's day, so he knew exactly what sort of reaction he was after. I think a lot of people have the idea that committing a crime on the internet is not a real crime, and think they can get away with it. I remember a girl who was jailed for making a threat online whining about how it was not fair she got convicted for something she wrote on an internet page, as if that made it different.

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