Announcement re deletion of Wig and Robe/Judge Flounce threads

[carrie (mumsnet)]

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

why do i think it's going to take me a long long time to catch up with this thread tomorrow morning ?

I do not want to start an argument or anything, but I think that W & R/JF Knew what she was doing, and it was contrived.
As such I do not think that she deserves my sympathy, I am sorry, but there are people with real problems on here and she did do a lot of damage, not just in her false advice but in stirring up emotions between members, those who had the courage to 'out' her were villified at first and I think we all lost something that day, a little bit of trust.
I hope that NOW the W&R fiasco can be forgotten, but I would like to thank MNet for telling us this and for those who did 'out' her, whether you think it could have been done differently or not, it needed doing and as I have already said W&R was aware of what she was doing and if her DH really is a psychologist (which I will not speculate over) I hope he sorts her out, but she is not our problem.
I am just sad that trust was accepted and betrayed.

elliott, I only thought that because I asked dh, he had never heard the term before.

Also wonder if more than one person was involved to account for the different attitudes which MNetters related to.

The steve schindler website is still down and just been reading his posts on the nowehere forum...some of which are a bit yucky to say the least.

I also don't think a man would have been so busy watching Neighbours and Cbeebies constantly (in between mumsnetting - when did she think we imagined she was in court?)

oops there's nothing directly about her'dh'- and I have to say I missed some of it as it all happened quite fast and various websites disappeared as they were discovered - but putting it all together I'd say that W&R and W&R dh are one and the same and I think successfully tracked down by janh and others.

This may have been said before but I think the Cardiff/South West meet up location should be kept between those planning to attend and not posted on here. You never know who may be watching them!

I have to say that I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent, but I never really doubted her qualifications, I just thought she was giving herself an exaggerated online persona.

I guess that I didn't really think that much about her and analyse everything, as once people started pointing stuff out I realised that I'd been conned.

Good thing I'm only here for the laughs and didn't ever need Legal advice.

Message withdrawn

I wonder if Lavender will believe it now. Last I 'saw' of Lav she was convinced W&r /JF was real.

She took LOTS of advise about her tribunal too.

galaxy I had the impression taht some of the people on the Cardiff meet thread weren't aware of the potential problem.

I keep wondering if it was a journalist, and the whole thing has been documented, and we will be re-reading the whole sorry tale again in the Sunday Times in a couple of weeks time?!

yes roisin, or part of some psychological paper or post grad thesis .

didn;t she send a computer to someone?

LIZS, yeah even JF/W&R herself admitted that her 'colleagues' posted instead of her on many occasions!

mieow, I think.

I'm glad it was dealt with online. I never really read W&R's postings but as the 'Apology' thread unfolded it seemed obvious s/he was a fake and very probably a man having a laugh at the expense of some vulnerable people. The whole episode was gripping and raised some really important questions - but in the end fakery was exposed.

sorry but was it Stephen or Jane who posted all this?
I need to know

I'm rather with DillyDally. There was certainly some sort of desperate yawning need for attention, and reaction - "belonging", in some way, even via obsessive advice-offering - which could be one effect of a loss.

Oh, and I know full well that lots of the advice was patently wrong, and am very sorry for those who got the razor-sharp edge of W&R's tongue, but wasn't some of the input actually in some way helpful or, at least, illuminating for the rest of us? Re Lavender's tribunal, for instance?

I agree with Tentunturq re the bereavement thread, and had thought the same thing about strategy. It's very very easy to want to believe the best of people, and give them the benefit of the doubt - and the intensity of the net can be very emotional sometimes. A really good warning about how young people can be misled. I honestly don't think anyone should be kicking themselves - listening generously is an important virtue - but I think that we should also allow sceptical voices the same freedom as supporting voices. Then MN will flourish as gloriously s it always has done.

hear hear blu

I initially thought W&R was a man when she made the comment about "preferring to wank in her bedroom instead of the bathroom" as for the life of me I couldnt see why a woman would need to wank in the bathroom.

Jampots! I missed that thankfully!