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Announcement re deletion of Wig and Robe/Judge Flounce threads

871 replies

carrie (mumsnet) · 13/01/2005 13:15

Dear mumsnetters,

We are now able to shed a bit more light as to what actually occurred re the Wig and Robe/Judge Flounce episode. We are pretty sure (having received a confession of as much) that, as some of you suspected, W&R/JF was a non-lawyer masquerading as a QC. Given this knowledge we have deleted the relevant postings and banned the user from the site.

If nothing else the whole business is a salutary reminder that you can never be completely sure that folks are who they say they are and neither should you necessarily completely trust the advice, especially "professional" advice, posted on mumsnet.

As a result of some concerns raised by you we are looking into making parts of the site, the swaps and weight loss clubs for example, something that operates via mumsnet HQ so that people's addresses are not being circulated. If anyone has any other suggestions then please [email protected] or post them here and we promise to consider them.

We?d also remind folks that when organising meet ups you should take the same precautions you would when meeting anyone from the net - make sure you meet in a public place and that others know where you are going.

Having said all that, it would be a shame if this relatively rare occurrence of someone pretending to be someone they are not changed the warm, supportive, welcoming and caring atmosphere on mumsnet - and we're confident that you won't let it!

Thanks for all the supportive and helpful emails we've received from so many of you.

Carrie, Rachel and Justine

OP posts:
franch · 13/01/2005 22:36

This is all really weird, esp the photo thing. I never followed W&R closely enough to notice anything odd about him/her - but I do remember thinking in passing that it was unusual for someone to make their profession part of their nickname. I wouldnt do that in a million years.

JanH · 13/01/2005 22:37

LOL about Cardiff, Caligula!

Socci · 13/01/2005 22:38

Message withdrawn

aloha · 13/01/2005 22:42

I don't feel bad...because I thought that as well as being ignorant and a fraud, I found her persona deeply dislikable too. And she was rude to me (not as rude as she was to PPH, say, but rude enough). Ha!

JanH · 13/01/2005 22:44

aloha, she was only really rude to people who had her number, so I would take that as a compliment!

aloha · 13/01/2005 22:46

That's probably true. Anyway off to bed. V cross because dh has just reminded me I missed the expose on Kabbalah on TV. Grr.

Carla · 13/01/2005 22:46

Thanks SM!

lavenderr · 13/01/2005 22:51

what do you think, should e-mail JF or leave it, don't know if want to e-mail someone haven't a clue who they are...but still intruiged about who it actually is (will probably lie in bed trying to piece together this charade...grrr... mumsnet eh..takes your time doesn't it).

Beetroot · 13/01/2005 22:52

This reply has been deleted

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JanH · 13/01/2005 22:52

Why don't you decide, lav?

Beetroot · 13/01/2005 22:52

This reply has been deleted

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Frizbe · 13/01/2005 22:52

has this turned into the 1st one to 1000 thread?

sparklymieow · 13/01/2005 22:54

I won't lav, I think that if you read the thread you can work it all out anyway!

Blossomhill · 13/01/2005 22:54

Pretty please can someone update me on this as I need my bed and haven't got time to go through nearly 700 messages.
Is it all lies then?

CarrieG · 13/01/2005 22:55

No-one knows...but looks that way.

tigermoth · 13/01/2005 22:55

639 posts since 1.15 pm today. better get reading....

Blossomhill · 13/01/2005 22:56

Not everything

CarrieG · 13/01/2005 22:56

Think so.

lavenderr · 13/01/2005 23:00

have read most of it, so W&R is

a woman living in South Wales, who is pretending to be lawyer (maybe was a long time ago, or maybe still training, or maybe not at all).

she studied at Cambridge, Clare Hall from 1979-1983 and is called Jane Schindler

she has children but for some reason has lied on here a lot (about her job)

OR she is a man and if so why are we still here?

what are the conclusions of her/his background then?

moondog · 13/01/2005 23:04

To recap (as I may need a favour one day)..
As we know, W&R was dispensing legal advice in a robust fashion. Then she started a thread referring to a son who had died of Meningitis over a decade ok which caused a stir. Her posts then became very sentimental and emotional-very different from her legal ones.
Then she posted saying that someone had exposed her as a fraud. Huge furore ensued, people for/against whilst W&R withdrew from all discussions.
MN moderators informed us that they had contacted her husband (she had referred to a psychologist dh and given a link to his website) and he had asked them to withdraw posts about the baby.
Great drama, much speculation for a variety of reasons, namely....
some MNers had been suspicious and contacted MN bout this
she had posted pictures purportedly of herself and her dead son
she had sent an MNer a keyboard
trawling through commonly available registers of QCs do not reveal anyone who could be W&R although she seems to have borrowed background from a RL QC
is 'she' actually Steve Schindler the guy who is supposedly her dh, who pops up on other chatrooms making strange aggressive comments about women, but bizarrely also referring to Jane (W&R said that this was her RL name) with whom he lives.

OK??!!

sparklymieow · 13/01/2005 23:08

where is the refer to Jane, SS's wife, I can't find it on any of the site

spacedonkey · 13/01/2005 23:09

he refers to a Jane on the knowhere site

lavenderr · 13/01/2005 23:12

Steve Schindler on other chat rooms? which?

maybe he is the perpatrator here, she knows a bit about law and he is posting things about their family and posting pictures of her and getting half baked law things from his wife who may be some law person or other (weird!).

edam · 13/01/2005 23:12

Happy birthday sparkly Mieow.

Wow. This thread is amazing. I wasn't even aware there was a poster called themoneyshot... serves me right for cutting down my MN habit radically in Nov/Dec, can't believe I missed so much!

spacedonkey · 13/01/2005 23:12

I doubt we will ever know lavender.