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!

It's not unprecedented, is it? Look at the number of arrests for speech in this country over the last few years. There are about 30 a day. Literally arresting people for things they say online or in private conversations. There have been quite a few high profile cases where the police have overreached and been forced to apologise. So yeah, I don't doubt that it's true - and if it isn't, well, the facts will be on record, won't they, so I'm sure we'll find out soon enough.

How was she inflaming him? By texting a separate person to rant about them? Where presumably she didn't think the person would report her text to the police?

• Over 12,000 arrests/year: Reports from early 2025, based on data up to 2023, indicate police are making over 12,000 arrests annually under laws covering offensive online communications (like S127 Communications Act 2003).
• Significant Increase: This represents a nearly 58% rise compared to 2019, when around 7,700 arrests were recorded.

That some people are so desperate to justify this appalling overreaction is frankly terrifying. At what stage do you admit to yourself that you welcomed the police state?

Blimey, that's awful!

Well maybe they should go and arrest the Pogues while they're at it.

No one said offence should be illegal, that’s a straw man. The UK has always had legal limits on speech. Pointing that out isn’t smug; refusing to accept it while lecturing others on free expression however...

None of this is new. The laws have been in place for ages, all that’s changed is the number of people skirting/crossing those long-established lines and the number of people reporting them for it. Calling that ‘criminalising offence’ just ignores how the law works.

I don't agree. There seems to be plenty of people who are claiming that causing offence should be illegal. There have been a significant number of cases where someone wrote something fairly inoffensive on the Internet and the police turn up at their door. For example Alison Pearson. Or Graham Lineham, who was arrested months later by armed police. This is wrong and chilling.

The other issue is not being able to predict what will cause offence and to whom. No one wants the police at their door on Sunday morning like Alison Pearson and to have their books checked for wrong-think.

I think people who defend this or don't think there's much of a problem with the law as it is perhaps haven't done much reading in life to know it's worrying as to where this sort of thing might go. (That's just my personal opinion of course and I'm sure it doesn't apply to all).

What a waste of police time.

So an abuse victim receiving online threats and texts from their abuser would be wasting the police’s time by expecting it to be dealt with.

The majority of these cases don’t warrant investigation based on one incident. Although they can if the nature and credibility of a threat is high. They are investigated when someone is on the receiving end of numerous unsolicited and unwanted malicious communications. Because that is someone harassing and abusing you.

In this case the abuser accepted guilt and the poor reporting even notes it was a barrage of messages.

It is right that people who harass and abuse others online and via texts or by phone or poison pen letters are prosecuted and stopped. It is not acceptable behaviour. Even if your feelings have been hurt or you have been a victim yourself. A lot of abusers will have been victims. It doesn’t mean that cannot be held accountable and it doesn’t give them some privileged status in society.

A police investigation will start with inviting you in for an interview. If you don’t cooperate then you will be arrested. For some activists the publicity of an arrest is all part of their campaign.

Alison Pearson has a huge public platform and she is meant to be a journalist. She posted an online story using a photo which she should have known was misinformation. At a time of heightened sectarian tensions between 2 communities in this country. Someone or many people reported it as incitement.

Once a crime is reported the police are compelled to do something which would be controversial either way. If it was NFA’d it would be as much as an issue.

The police don’t judge. They have a duty to investigate and the right to detain people who don’t cooperate with investigations. The CPS and the courts will provide checks and balances to administer of justice and judgement. Those principles elevate policing in this country way ahead of most of the rest of the world. It’s a good thing.

Hmmm......scary post. And one that ignores what's happening.

As a country we've decided, via our elected Parliament, that malicious communication is illegal. That offence can be aggravated where particular intent is used.

Using the word to describe a sort of meatball, or at least in my opinion in a an artistic context as in The Fairy Tale of New York is OK.

There are two things people are thinking about though:

• Is this law right? Do we want/need this law?
• If we do, are the police and the courts interpreting it in the right way?

My view is that the law needs to be revised. I don't think it is a good use of police and court time to prosecute someone for a one-off event like this. The police seem to be prioritising cases like this at the expense of more significant crimes, I assume because they are easy to investigate.

If the messages continued despite the recipient blocking them, or contained threats or incitement to violence, that would be different.

In this case it was a "barrage of messages"

Not a one off

And once more, in this particular case, you (like everyone else) have no idea what the 'rude words' were. You have no idea how vulnerable the victim felt. Given she knew the person sending the messages, you have no idea how much this prior knowledge impacted the level of distress the victim felt. What we know is the courts, who were in possession of all the information, felt there was a case to answer. We also know the accused pleaded guilty. Keep minimising this particular victims experience if you want. Maybe it helps you feel 'validated' whatever the fuck you mean by that.

https://westgatesentinel.com/amp/story/international/11-uk-cops-storm-home-drag-naked-woman-from-bath-her-crime-one-text-calling-her-attacker-a-slur

Tell me haven't read the thread without telling me you haven't read the thread

Where do you get your figure of 30 a day?

That is not a reliable source. The image used is AI and the reporting is not factual

House of Lords website

"..in April 2025, the Times published an article using data collated from freedom of information requests made to police forces setting out the number of arrests made under section 1 and section 127 (not all forces provided data to the Times).[4] The authors also used Ministry of Justice data to show the number of convictions for the offences.

The authors reported that police officers are making over 12,000 arrests a year under the legislation, equating to over 30 a day. They also claimed that the number of arrests in 2023 represented an almost 58% increase since before the pandemic. It said that in 2019 forces had recorded 7,734 arrests."

Watch out everyone.

I understood that it was a barrage of messages in a short timeframe. I would consider that a one off and I guess the police also did if they didn't charge her with harassment.

You're just trying to minimise the offense.

She broke the law, was prosecuted and plead guilty. A law that's been on the books since the 1980s.

Would you be happy to receive multiple abusive and unsolicited messages. Because that is what is meant by malicious. Would you be happy to be told you can block that person or come off social media to avoid them? Do you think that would stop someone who would do this in first place? Because they just find other means to do something no right thinking person would ever do.

It is very easy to not send a barrage of malicious messages or make multiple malicious posts. Most right minded moral people know it is wrong and act responsibly. Those that don’t act responsibly face consequences in order for our freedoms to continue. That’s why the punishment for crimes is a removal of freedoms.

I think we've slightly gone off track here. I thought the point of this thread was that the word fagg*t was used and the woman was crininalised for it because the recipient took offence. If the facts are simply that she was harassing someone then the thread is fairly pointless. Do we know the facts yet?