'Nicola Bulley's reputation 'destroyed' by police'

[MyrtIe]

Article here

The points made about victim blaming and the police disclosing this information to cover themselves are spot on imo.

The usual gutter press are having a field day with this today.

What exactly was the point of it? What's it achieved, apart from compounding the heartache of her loved ones?

YABU - the police were right to divulge this sensitive information as it was relevant to the investigation

YANBU - there was absolutely no need to do so

@Rainn21 · Today 14:05
I’d love to know why people care so much about this case in particular. Around 200,000 people in the U.K. are reported missing every year, many of them never come back.

I just said the same. There must be more to this than they are letting on

I'm no fan of the police but the information given has been forced due to the ridiculous social media speculation and amateur detectives scouring the land for clues. If anyone has created this farce it's the ghouls revelling in every detail. There's threads on MN , everyone is to blame.
It's not sexism to say she was suffering with menopause. I was in the depths of menopause at 45, I used alcohol to cope. I used to walk off all the time. The way I felt I'd gladly have taken my own life on my worst days.
This info would have shut up all the idiots, only now because they feel ridiculous blaming everyone as potential perp, they want to direct their anger to the police for telling them something they said they should have known but that the police shouldn't be divulging.
People are horrible

I agree with this.

The way the police have released this information is dreadful. There was no need. They should have just let all the armchair detectives carry on with their ghoulish behaviour. They will soon move on to another case to feed on.

It is now almost as though the police are saying that NB vanishing is less of a concern than it would have been if she were a woman without these issues. Reminds me of the way the Yorkshire Ripper case was handled- worthy women and unworthy women.

That is an extremely confusing statement from the family.

Why the push that she definitely wasn't in the river?

Why that interview which was suppossed to help find N.B, but which verged on deliberately misleading if this newest statement is true?

This case has had the most bizarre coms.

It wasn't meant to excuse her, but to tell the public that nobody else is at fault. Because indeed there is no particular connection between menopause and drinking.
Both elements of this information (1 - alcohol, 2 - menopause) were released with the consent of the family, precisely to end all the speculation about the husband being a suspect.

Disappeared woman = anything is possible (accident, suicide, crime, abduction, elopement etc)
Disappeared woman with alcohol issues = husband may be involved
Disappeared woman with alcohol issues caused by menopause = nobody else's fault.

Perhaps it took so long for them to release this because they weren't sure themselves and wanted to further follow the behaviour of the husband/family/friends/coworkers, media interviews and all. But all the discussion about „poor police/family harassed by armchair detectives” is absurd. Police does release information only when they are sure it doesn't harm the investigation. Not to mention that in fact the SM buzz usually does help this kind of investigations (see for ex. the very high profile Gabby Petito case in the US).

So according to the bbc breaking news the police released the information because there were people out there threatening to sell the story.

And that’s from the family.

So maybe now people can shut up about how the police are doing this to further their own agenda, how it was wrong etc.

Or would people have preferred for someone to have profited from the information and for the information to be out there anyway.

If someone was going to sell the story then sadly it would seem it’s not as close-nit village as the family hoped, since that information could only have been known by someone who knew or knew of Nicola.

I don’t understand why it wasn’t mentioned sooner. Not the specifics, but the fact they have reason to believe she may have had some mental health issues. It’s not unusual in missing persons cases to do that. It reduces unnecessary speculation and ensures the media know something else is going on. Not sure why it’s taken this long.

"So according to the bbc breaking news the police released the information because there were people out there threatening to sell the story.

And that’s from the family. "

Exactly. It also explains why they felt they had to release it now.

And the next headlines will be 'can stopping HRT suddenly cause you mental anguish'

I don't think they will, it depends how "newsworthy" the story is. This case has two key things that make it a more attractive story.

First, the circumstances of the disappearance are unusual. It's rare for the timing of a disappearance to have such a short window. Usually the period is much bigger, often it's only when someone hasn't been contactable for a few days that people go to the police. (Example: if I don't turn up for work tomorrow, my boss will probably ring me, but if he gets no response would probably not worry unduly. It's unlikely anyone would go to the police until at least Monday if I'm honest.)

Second, the person who disappeared is "interesting" to the media because on the face of it they appear to just be a "normal" person. Most people who disappear already live on the fringes of society and struggle with issues such as homelessness, drug addiction, mental illness or are involved in crime. A "normal" person with a job and a family and no immediately obvious reason to want to disappear generates interest.

Ask yourself, why is it in this case there have been so many comments on this site alone. Why not in the thousands of other disappearances? I think because, on a superficial level, many on here think they are not too dissimilar to the person who has gone missing.

In many cases we like to imagine that the bad things we hear about on the news wouldn't happen to us, but some cases hit closer to home.

@IClaudine I mentioned the Yorkshire Ripper case yesterday, how the women he murdered were always labelled prostitutes, when many were not.

My last post on these threads, the statement issued by the family, seems to indicate there may have been an entente cordiale between all parties involved and the may all now be giving the same information.

"As a family, we were aware that Lancashire Police, last night, released a statement with some personal details.

Aware. It doesn't say they have permission. Although even if they did, these personal medical details regarding another person should not be shared with the public anyway.

The second paragraph is pretty important.

As a family, we were aware that Lancashire Police, last night, released a statement with some personal details.

"Although we know that Nikki would not have wanted this, there are people out there threatening to sell stories about her. This is appalling and needs to stop."

Personally, I think the problem is that a great many people on this site (to say nothing of the moderators) do not understand what the word "speculation" means. Speculation is "ideas or guesses about something that is not known" (Britannica Dictionary), or "the activity of guessing possible answers to a question without having enough information to be certain" (Cambridge Dictionary). Or, as Vocabulary.com says very simply "When you guess about how something is going to come out (or how it happened), that's speculation. You're making an educated guess."

There are over a dozen threads on this site filled with THOUSANDS of speculations, and the police and family have asked REPEATEDLY for this to stop. If posters won't listen the MNHQ ought to. The fact they don't means that all of them care a lot more about click bait than they do about Nicola.

I someone goes missing without trace and there are facts about that person that may well be either the cause or relevant to the case then yes they should be shared.
You cannot cherry pick because you don't like it !

Poor, poor woman. All they had to say was that she was vulnerable. I've seen that written in missing person articles in our local paper if a vulnerable person goes missing. It's respectful, but informative.

I think the police are way out of order giving this information about Nicola Bulley. No respect and totally sexist.

A former police person on Sky has just said that there was a welfare check on the home recently.

Statement from Nicola's family.

The content of which is far more important than the bloody theorising on this site and elsewhere.

twitter.com/lancspolice/status/1626218463823011840?s=46&t=ov0W9941CqR6im0mp674UQ

Hardly fair to say the police dismissed this as suicide, 40 detectives full time for 3wks doesn't seem like just assuming to me.

All those threads should be zapped. It is one thing to share concern, another to make up wild theories and pick apart her LinkedIn pages (yes I admit I read some of the most recent thread. Wish I hadn't now as it makes me as bad as those posting).

Why the push that she definitely wasn't in the river?

Because if she’s in the river, she’s not coming back. If she’s been abducted, there’s at least a chance of rescue. It’s cognitive dissonance and grief-bargaining. I am so sorry for the family.

wonder how much of an overlap of this band of armchair detectives/batshits/delusional army there is with the other 'armies' who are also medical, brain stem, ICU experts?

I have spent my entire life round either heroin, opiate or alcohol addictions. The police, in the vast majority, seem to care a lot less about addicts than they do the weal public. The general public seems to care about addicts a bit less than 'normal' people too, on the whole.

I imagine it was just meant to make people care a bit less: she's just another addict like all the others who go missing now, see? Nothing of interest here...

I don't think the mention of menopause was intended as misogyny- I think, oddly, it was intended as a kindness. Nicola's problems were for understandable reasons framed like this; she's not scum like, for instance, my family were always seen as, even with a drink issue this way...

that was exactly my thoughts this morning too. None of it helps her the poor family at the centre of this.

For her to have had police offices 'and' another dept visit her house is serious.

Very serious.

It's completely relevant as it explains a. why the husband immediately rang 999 and b. why the police immediately made a big deal out of it when normally they're not interested in missing people (adults of their own accord going off missing isn't an issue for at least 48hrs)

We don't know what it was for, but it was serious and it's relevant.