Anyone seen woman arrested for saying f****t in a private text message?

[Whywhywhyyyy]

This is completely bizarre. The news is thin on the ground so to see it I would have to link the mail or other obscure sites; but they are talking about this on Sky News abroad so assume it’s legit.

Apparently woman was arrested by 10 officers and dragged naked from a bath tub because she called a person who hospitalised her from assault a faggot in a message ranting to a supposed friend who reported her for using that word.

What is going on in this country?!

Yes sure that’s unpleasant. But is that really illegal? And if she has been hospitalised by this person then do I really care if someone uses bad words - even if they are hateful.

YABU - that’s a perfectly appropriate use of the law
YANBU - WTF is going on in this country!

Yep. Not arrested for ‘a word in a text’.

It wasn't the F word or any insult that got her arrested.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/27/section/1

To simplify, it includes

Threats
Indecent or grossly offensive material
False information intended to cause distress or anxiety
Anything sent with the purpose of causing distress or anxiety

So it's not just "Hurty words" and frankly anyone using that phrase is showing themselves up to be a deeply unoriginal thinker with the critical thinking abilities of a clam

Not how it works thankfully.

In the UK, sending a text message containing a homophobic slur like "faggot" can be a
criminal offence under several laws, primarily the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003.
The key factor is that the message is considered "grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or menacing" and is sent with the intent to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient.
Why it is a crime:

• Grossly Offensive Communication: It is an offence to send an electronic communication that is grossly offensive, with the intent to cause distress or anxiety to the recipient. The use of a slur is highly likely to meet this "grossly offensive" threshold.
• Hate Crime Aggravation: Crucially, if the offence is motivated by hostility towards the victim's actual or perceived sexual orientation, the court is legally required to treat this as an aggravating factor, which results in a more severe sentence (a "sentence uplift").
• Harassment: If the text message is part of a pattern of behaviour, it could also lead to charges under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. There are cases where individuals have been prosecuted for harassment involving persistent use of homophobic abuse.

Hope that helps.

I don't find the sun reputable

You're being disingenuous, and you know it.

The circumstance you described would qualify as harassment if the person was making a long-running, sustained attempt to contact a person that had made it clear that they didn't want to be contacted.

In this particular case, a woman was attacked by a man, and unleashed her emotions in a rant to someone she considered a friend, and in that rant, there were homophobic slurs used.

Do you really think, in that instance, she should be criminalised for using those words?

Again-we're not talking harassment, we're talking criminalising alleged hate speech.

Shocker.

Find a source you do find reputable then.

Not read the thread, but why are people reacting to this 'what is the world coming to?!!' click bait shit?

A pork recipe favoured in northern parts ?.....Mmm, tasty !

So you do agree with censorship and criminalising words in certain context.

If we're going to be free speech absolutists then we can do away with harassment based on words after all who the fuck is the government to tell me I can call my neighbor a racial slur but I can only do it 3 times and after that it's harassment, it's not free speech if I've got a quota on how many times and I'm what manner I can say it.

Also as you say distress is to vague so let's get rid of common assault, how can we gauge fear and anyway it's unfair because now I can just say any words you say that I don't like put me in fear of violence so that's woke nonsense. It's not like the law will account for what is a reasonable belief or judges to instruct on the application of the law.

Reading between the lines she didn’t message her attacker , she messaged a (female?) mutual friend. The messages were deemed abusive and the word “faggot” added an extra layer of hate crime.

Didn't the great John Lydon once use this word in one of his epic compositions ? The song was 'New York' I believe.

Except she wasn’t ’ranting’ to someone she considered a friend. According to reports they’d already fallen out and the recipient of the messages found them alarming and distressing. Now I don’t know what she said, but neither do you. Although you seem very keen to keep defending people’s right to send abusive messages.

Sorry, but how is “Anything sent with the purpose of causing distress or anxiety” not “just hurty words”?

And how can it reasonably be enforced or judged objectively?

In the world of misleading rage bait, the word "after" is not the same as "because".

Arrested after using an offensive word is not the same as arrested because of using one offensive word.

Fairytale of new York ive been humming it while reading

I think you are over simolying. The CPS will be required to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the defendant in this case purposefully used that term to cause distress and harm and intended to be homophobic, and moreover that one can be absolutely certain of the meaning of that term and it is understood as homophobic. It is not a straight forward case as it might be if we were looking at other terms we all know and avoid.

To successfully prosecute any offence concerning the malicious communications act this would be depend on the quantity and content in the other messages, they would be considered separately to the term used.

They will not pass the threshold if the defendant was merely expressing her own anger and frustration around the events of the attack, and was not intimidating or threatening the recipient, then it is very unlikely she will be charged. Quantity matters. The content is very subjective, but generally needs to considered grossly offensive as to cause extreme distress, which is a very high bar.

If only there was a way she could have argued that the words used weren't maliciously sent or unlawful and that they weren't sent to cause alarm and distress, maybe even some crazy pie in the sky system where she might have had the chance to put forward her defence with the aid of a trained legal practitioner and stand over what she said as being lawful....

No no

That's just fantasy

Better to freely admit that you did all the things you're accused of and let others insist you're innocent

Did she plead guilty? I am not sure she has freely admitted any offence so far.

It's a subjective test so it's judged subjectively. A whole lot of criminal offenses are.

Yes. It's in every link that's been provided on the case so far

Which others are subjective?

Yes. She pleaded guilty

Nah, this one.

Pretty much any offense which is not strict liability in terms of the offender as they have a mens rea whenever which must be proven, as we aren't mind readers we rely on a subjective interpretation of what the accused intended or was reckless as to occurring based on their acts.

In terms of the subjectivity of the victims interpretation there are common assault, harassment, stalking then you have certain public order offences relating to behaviour likely to cause alarm or distress, affray. Im sure there's more that aren't immediately coming to mind.

It's why legislation is poured over in drafting and why we have legislative and judicial interpretation.

Having laws which can be completely objectively judged do not tend to work in application beyond certain offences such as speeding or emission/pollution based offers for companies.

Everything from shoplifting to murder involves subjective interpretation of what occured and whether it satisfies the elements of an offence.

Yeah I agree and understand the distinction. This was a 5 minute one off. So whilst unpleasant friend could block and move on.

I thought it was a friend too - shit one at that. But turns out when I watched the piers Morgan it was an ex friend who was seeing her ex partner and she alleges this person had been making trouble for her and was the reason she was attacked and hospitalised.

So the rant was directed at her presumably. Which is certainly unpleasant and a very alarming communication if you are innocent. But is it malicious? I am not sure it is.

It might be malicious if she knew the person didn’t do it but wanted to make them think that she thought that they did. That’s a wild circle I had to do in my head there but it’s the intent to damage an innocent party kind of thinking.

If it was a misunderstanding then it’s a bad mistake and it’s unpleasant and alarming but I don’t think is malicious.

If the friend did organise her attack then I definitely don’t think that’s malicious to go mental at them.