internet troll jailed - a bit ott?

[netherlee]

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.

[WhereYouLeftIt]

"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)."

But surely a minority of people NOT diagnosed with Asperger syndrome are callous and have both a CE deficit and a substantial EE deficit?

[Thumbwitch]

Probably, whereyouleftit, but what's your point?

[thefirstMrsDeVere]

I have had friends that have had to shut down their children's memorial sites because of this sort of behaviour.

Some of the sites were years old and full of supportive messages, photos, poems etc.

They just couldnt deal with the trolling and deleted them. There were not the same anymore.

When I first opened my DD's site you could leave a message just by typing it. A year or so later it changed and now you have to do the code thing. I didnt know why until my friend said that she didnt allow any messages to go directly on her DD's site anymore and moderated all comments.

You see why this is a difficult subject for me? I have a child with ASD and a dead child whose memorial site is an incredibly important place. In the first years after her death it was even more so. I have no grave to visit and this is somewhere I could 'talk' to her.

But I wouldnt want my DS (who has ASD) being treated as someone who didnt have it if he did something he didnt really understand.

I also know the parents of children who have killed themselves due to bullying. My friends DS was only 12 and she found him. Cyber has made it even easier to get hold of victims.

[Migsy1]

Perhaps community service would have been more beneficial. Awful thing for him to do though.

[kelly2000]

But are those with aspergers who are also callous, have a ce deficit, and an ee deficit this way because of the aspergers? Aspergers is not the only feature of a person. You can have someone with aspergers who has qualities and faults independent of the aspergers, their personality does not have to revolve around the fact they have aspergers. This guy has aspergers, but it does not appear he acted this way because he had aspergers, and it certainly seems he understood that what he was doing was wrong and hurtful, he was warned by the police to stop, the families asked him to stop and he sent them abusive messages in reply, he tried to hide his tracks, he put the messages up at specific times to maximize hurt i,e on mothers day he wrote messages addressed to the mothers from the victims etc. He knew full well what he was doing was wrong and was causing hurt, whether he empathised with his victims or not or gave a sod about their feelings does not make him any less guilty.
It is wrong to make assumptions about a person just because they have aspergers, or any other condition, and claiming this guy is not to blame simply because he has aspergers is making a huge assumption. He had his time in court, and his legal team had every chance to argue that he did not understand what he was doing.

[reallytired]

Why do poster think they know better than the judge? I am sure he knows more details than we do.

He commited a REAL crime with REAL victims. He deserves no sympathy.

Maybe he should be in a pychatric hospital rather than prison. I hope there was a proper pychatric assessment.

[silverfrog]

your post is full of assmptions, kelly.

it could also be said of his actions:

he put messages up at a time guaranteed to get maximum interest and attention
that he did not understand why it was wrong, therefore he ignored the warnings form police
there is no way (from the reports) of knowing whether he understood what he was doing was hurtful
hiding his tracks could be because it is a "normal" thing to do on the internet - have a username, multiple accounts - as Starlight pointed out earlier, by seeing what some other people were doing on eg FB, and just slightly misinterpreting the social cues, he coudl easily end up doing what he did.

the bit you hav right is that yes, he is guilty of this crime.

but the rest is speculation. you do not know any of those things to be true. and I (and other posters) have pointed out that it is entirely possible (not a certain fact) that none of the above does apply.

and yet oyu find it hard to understand that this could be the case. it is hard ot understand the complete lack of understanding that can come along with a high functioning adult with ASD. reallytired touched on another misconception - that the lack of learning difficulties = no chance of a lack of social understanding.

it can be absolutely breathtaking, the mismatch between actual understanding of a situation, and apparent understanding, or what other people take to be understanding of a situation.

no one has claimed he is not to blame. everyone is in agreement that what he did was wrong (how many times do I have to post that?). what is being discussed is whether the puishment fits the crime, in this instnce, and whether the punishment will act as the deterrent it is supposed to. and it is possible that it will not, because the punishment is thoguht out form an NT pov, with an NT person in mind. what happens when (if) he does his time, gets out and does the same thing again? same again? and again? because if he does not understand why it is wrong, he may not be able to work out how to not make similar mistakes in the future. and he may not have done it with the intention of causing hurt in the first place (which still does not make what he did ok).

[TakeThisOneHereForAStart]

There's also this, which I realise is talking about the loss of a child before it's first birthday. I don't think there has been a study on the parents of teenagers who die, perhaps there should be, but I suspect it would give similar results.

Bereaved parents die of broken heart

www.chatelaine.com/en/blog/post/31373--how-intense-grief-can-shorten-your-life

Some of these deaths can be linked to poor health before the loss, but many seem to factor around suicide, a decline in lifestyle due to the stress of grief (such as alcohol or drug abuse) but others are put down to grief and stress suppressing a parents immune system and making them more susceptible to disease.

The risk is highest up to ten years following the loss of a baby but is still present for up to 30 years after the loss. They believe it declines as the initial intense pain of grief subsides.

Again, this study was of parents who lost babies, not teenagers.

But I suspect the effects of grief would be the same no matter how old your child is.

And this man has dragged out the initial grief, he set up the pages and started the abuse so quickly, and dragged it out so much for these families.

His mental and physical health should be taken into account but so should theirs. It is no less important. The damage he has caused to them could take years to show itself. If he has to be punished as well as rehabilitated, in order that those families can try and heal from the pain he has caused, then so be it.

I don't know if the other people who commented on the sick pages and videos he set up have been punished, but they should be and I hope they are.

I don't know if the bullies who drove Natasha to her death have been punished, but again, they should be and I hope they are.

But even if they haven't been punished yet, it doesn't mean that he shouldn't be punished.

But the families of his victims have been punished, and will be for the rest of their lives. It would have been a slap in the face to them if he were allowed to walk free, even with a course or some form of counselling or treatment or education programme.

It's still a slap in the face that the others responsible for the nasty comments may still be free. That can only be rectified if they too are caught and serve prison sentences alongside of Sean Duffy, not instead of him.

[Thumbwitch]

As far as I can see, very few people have said he should NOT serve a sentence for what he did, regardless of his understanding or motivation. MOST posters on here agree that he deserves to be in jail; but perhaps what is more up for debate is how much good that will do, depending on his level of understanding.

Very few are suggesting he should not be punished - he deserves fully to be punished - the only quibble is about whether or not it will make a difference to his behaviour in the future.

(And I am falling into the Aussie trap of explaining things more than once in a slightly different way, although I usually stop at 2 instead of their more usual 3)

[Xenia]

I am not sure he would have understood. Did he live with family which might have helped prevent him doing it after the warning?

[TakeThisOneHereForAStart]

I don't know if it will make a difference to his behaviour (lets hope so).

But I am certain it will make a difference to the families of his victims, and perhaps play a great part in their recovery for many years to come.

[Pendeen]

reallytired

Why do poster think they know better than the judge? I am sure he knows more details than we do.

You have a fair point but my comment was more about the philosophy of imprisioning someone for posting (admittedly vile) words on an internet forum.

The judge operates within the legal framework of the UK - it is that EU-derived framework with which I take issue. I believe the criminalising of radical / offensive / stupid opinions has been taken far too far.

I have no opinion on whether or not he has a real or imagined medical condition, it's just that prison seems to me to be complete overkill for such a crime compared with many other crimes.

[porcamiseria]

his behavour was so vile that it deserved to be punished, end of

[WhereYouLeftIt]

Sorry Thumbwitch, should have made clearer - if a minority of people diagnosed with AS are callous, and a minority of people NOT diagnosed with AS are callous, I can see no reason to assume that being callous has anything to do with AS.

[Thumbwitch]

Errrr - I don't know enough about the diagnostic process, you need Peachy or someone for that, but if someone was diagnosed with low EE and low CE they might fit into an AS diagnosis anyway, so your point may be redundant (but it might not).
Of course there are callous people but they might be calculatedly callous, knowing full well what they are doing will hurt someone - these are the sociopaths. But they don't have low CE and low EE, just low EE. As it said before the bolded bit in my post.

However - I could be wrong - it's not my area, I just found that part in the article I was reading and thought it was relevant to this discussion.

Am off to bed now, not ignoring any replies.

[kelly2000]

silverfrog,
I have not made an assumptions that is just it. I have trusted that a judge and defense lawyer had more access to his medical and psychiatric reports than posters on here, including me. Other people seem to hear aspergers, and hear that that must be the reason for his actions. I have no problem with understanding that some people with aspergers have a complete lack of understanding of social interactions etc, but I also understand that this is not the case all the time, and there is nothing in the story to suggest that this is the case, therefore we cannot make this assumption based on nothing more than the fact he has aspergers. I also fail to see why the fact that he maybe decided to ignore the police warnings as he himself did not see what the problem was is any excuse. Once he was told to stop by the police he knew it was illegal, his own opinions on the matter do not count. Pople cannot be excused, simply because they think it is wrong that something is illegal.
pendeen,
he carried out a campaign of harressment against families of teenagers who had died. Why does the fact that he took the trouble to go to their memorial pages and write it online mean he is less guilty than if he had repeatedly posted letters saying the same things to their house. It is no less real.

[Pendeen]

kelly2000

No more or less guilty.

No difficulty with the media used - internet, letters or any other written communication and no difficulty with the judgement per se - as I said the legal process was followed and a learned judge pronunced sentence.

Also no difficulty with someone being brought to account for their actions.

My point was, as I will say again, about the excessive extent to which the EU-derived legislation virtually forces the authorities to prosecute someone for using radical / offensive / stupid words by imprisioning them.

[flippinada]

I noticed this news report this morning and am not surprised to find it on here - I thought it would be a hot topic on MN.

I see some(not all) posters are bringing up the old 'must be mentally ill' trope- well mentally ill people are far more likely to hurt themselves than other people

And kelly is getting picked on a wee bit here isn't she. But I think she's making a very valid point. Aspergers is not an excuse, is it? You (general you) may not have much or any empathy as someone who is aspergers (apols if that's not the correct term) but you still know right from wrong, don't you?

He has been jailed as a punishment (rightly, I believe) for what is a heinous offence. It's a perfectly acceptable response to what he has done.

[Kladdkaka]

The question being asked here is whether a prison sentence is the right course of action for this individual. The answer to that depends on what you think the purpose of criminal sanctions should be. If you think the purpose should be to punish or gain retribution, then it is the right course of action. If you think the purpose should be to rehabilitate and change someone's behaviour, then it is the wrong course of action. I think that as a society we don't really know which of these we want, so we hover around the middle wanting a bit of both and getting not much of either.

[flippinada]

It also jumped out at me that other people were joining in the abuse and egging him on.

I wonder why those people are not being punished?

It is appalling that parents who have been bereaved in this way have to suffer such hideous cruelty. Some of the post on here are absolutely heartbreaking.

[flippinada]

I absolutely think it's OK and the correct course of action for someone who has done what he has to be punished.

In this case it's entirely appropriate.

[flippinada]

"I think that as a society we don't really know which of these we want, so we hover around the middle wanting a bit of both and getting not much of either."

Agree kladdkaka

[thefirstMrsDeVere]

Well I just read the article.

I cannot begin to tell you the affect that man's actions would have had on me after DD died.

I am suprised that his comments didnt push one of the parents or siblings over the edge. I think is pure 'luck' that no-one took their life as a result of what he did. Of course it wouldnt have been his fault but he could just have been what finished them off.

Just thinking about someone making those vile comments about DD is twisting my guts.

It all seems very calculated.
He is obviously a very angry individual. No one who is happy would do something like that.