What's the actual uk law on past offences?

[PatatiPatatras]

Who can talk about them ? And when can they be talked about? Press? do neighbours have rights to know? When is it public interest and does that change anything?

And what's the MN guideline on talking about past offences.
Or do we have special people who simply count the number of times their offences are mentioned and refer to anything high frequency as personal attacks?

There are threads which need to stay standing and it might be easier to discuss rules first before kicking off new ones.

Thanks to the actions of a notorious litigant in person, there’s now a very high bar to harassment via publication. I had better not link to judgements in case they identify Voldehat.

Harassment also has an element of intent to it.

In one judgement, a judge said he found it hard to understand why a person was constantly visiting a fruit farming website if he felt the website was harassing him. A website cannot harass someone.

The judge also gave Paddington Bear hard stares to the claimant who swore blind in court, despite evidence to the contrary, that he had not operated his own abusive socks on this alleged site of harassment and hate.

I stand to be corrected but a hypothetical example of malice.

Let's just imagine OP you I were friends and I'd disclosed to you in confidence that I had a spent conviction for fraud.

Then we fell out because I criticised your attempts at knitting bobble hats on Facebook and you plastered my spent conviction all over your social media "saying I might be a crap knitter but I've not been jailed for fraud" (and giving all the juicy details ) then that would be malice.

The only reason you disclosed this information publicly was to get back at me. The information wasn't widely known nor was it in the public interest because I don't work in finance/ hold any voluntary positions that involve finance, nor do i campaign on changing the law in areas related to my conviction.

On the other hand, let's say you know about the fraud but also that I'd applied to be treasurer of the PTA then disclosing the information would not be malicious because there was public interest in doing so, irrespective of the falling out. Though you'd be wise to separate the two things and not make the disclosure on the back of your bobble hats being criticised.

To be honest, the manglers of words have won the battle of confusion is truth.

Makes me think of the enigma machine.

Anyway, so a website cannot harass a person. Phew. The odd things that need clarification.

So, to mention a past conviction when it is legitimaly something the public should know, is it enough to always state why it is important to the conversation at hand to prove it is not harassment?

One would hope that these discussions over legal ins and outs would be live discussions for MNHQ and their legal bods. It would be good to know for any such situations that may arise what their legal standing is.

I don't think you have to state this no. But again I stand to be corrected.

There are some cases where the public interest is blindingly obvious.

That doesn't however stop the person with the conviction legally challenging your disclosure and as a precaution, whilst that challenge is "in play" a website or social media platform closing down discussion.

The likelihood of that person being successful in their challenge is however tenuous we

Opps...

...where the public interest is highly demonstrable.

However, some people may hypothetically keep making legal challenges simply because the process to fight back is time consuming and can be expensive.

Process as punishment and the aim is not always to win, but to put people off commenting.

Ah! so the burden of proof is on the person stating the truth to the public to prove that the truth isn't being manipulated to harm.
BUT this can only be done in court and the time and money to prove this is not always available.

So essentially litigating until litigation hides the truth. But why does the judiciary permit this? And why can't everyone do this? It doesn't seem to be common practice.

Ultimately I think it becomes a commercial matter.

In a hypothetical situation where a site such as MN was issued a legal challenge then they are going to have to balance just closing down the discussions to avoid the time/cost in fighting them vs the reputations backlash from users of the site which generate their content and thus drives advertising revenue for not standing their ground.

Obviously the subject at hand is very relevant and how fighting back/walking away impacts the values and reputation of the site in question.

Let's say there was a thread about a certain car and loads of posters talked about the faults they'd experienced or poor service. If the manufacturer threatened to sue how big a deal is it?

Well a big deal if it's a motoring website where users are encouraged to give honest reviews of their car. Shutting down discussion places the whole point of the site and the users faith in it a great risk. So going into bat against the manufacturer makes sense.

If let's say that thread was on Mumsnet, then it's less clear. Yes there's a freedom of speech aspect but the vast majority of users here aren't coming for advice on cars.

Conversely someone trying to prevent information being disclosed that is of significant interest to the users on one of the most visited topics on MN and parents in general then you would think that MNHQ are unlikely to cave in.

Let's say the comments re: the car were about poor child car seat attachments that had resulted in a child/children being harmed or potentially harmed.

If that thread had serious traction both within MN and on wider SM - then it would be a surprise if MN didn't fight back because the topic it goes to the heart of what an ethical parenting website should/shouldn't fight for.

Because most people don't have the time or legal knowledge personally (so they don't have to engage paid legal expertise) / access to free/subsidised legal services to make challenge after challenge.

However I understand that people can be classed as vexatious litigants and banned from bringing civil cases without permission.

I'm not sure about the process of how someone gets classed as such though.

www.gov.uk/guidance/vexatious-litigants

🙋oh that's why the police are being used to hand out warnings. People back off and that way there are very few litigations so little chance of ending up on the vexatious litigation list!

And if multiple police forces are used, not joining up the dots means no single entity can see that police time is being wasted.

Crafty.

So essentially either we all expect litigation until the courts pick up on the vexatious nature of them or we let the journalists bear the brunt of it.

Insightful.

Civil and criminal litigation are often used by vexatious litigators as a two pronged approach, especially if their motives are political and about brand building.

Most normal people still have faith and trust in our police and the system, so when a bad faith actor can point to police involvement and arrests, it sounds so much more serious.

This police involvement could be used not only to bolster a reputation or claim about a third party on social media, “look how my abuse I’m getting, look how mean they were, it’s really really serious”,* but also to back up a civil claim.

Serial complainants tend to have a lot of experience with the police, both as complainant and defendant, some have previously found themselves in the dock for harassment, and so they are extremely au fait with how to write a statement that pushes all the right buttons and they know the harm prevention/stalking checklists back to front, ready to be lapped up by a green young copper straight out of Stonewall’s ab initio training.

The ultimate aim is to put so much pressure on an individual that they pay you to make the civil proceedings go away, and if you get a criminal conviction and press attention from your court case, all the better to push your cause/brand on social media.

• serious being nothing more than calling someone something like a cat in a hat, a louse on a mouse etc, on Twitter.

If you want to see how the law is worded, here is Section 8 of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act.

Section 8 deals with “Defamation Actions”

8 Defamation actions

.(1)This section applies to any action for libel or slander begun after the commencement of this Act by a [F2rehabilitated][F2protected] person and founded upon the publication of any matter imputing that the plaintiff has committed or been charged with or prosecuted for or convicted of or sentenced for an offence which was the subject of a spent conviction.

(2)Nothing in section 4(1) above shall affect an action to which this section applies where the publication complained of took place before the conviction in question became spent, and the following provisions of this section shall not apply in any such case.

(3)Subject to subsections (5) and (6) below, nothing in section 4(1) above shall prevent the defendant in an action to which this section applies from relying on any defence [F3of justification or fair comment or][F3under section 2 or 3 of the Defamation Act 2013 which is available to him or any defence] of absolute or qualified privilege which is available to him, or restrict the matters he may establish in support of any such defence.

(4)Without prejudice to the generality of subsection (3) above, where in any such action malice is alleged against a defendant who is relying on a defence of qualified privilege, nothing in section 4(1) above shall restrict the matters he may establish in rebuttal of the allegation.

(5)A defendant in any such action shall not by virtue of subsection (3) above be entitled to rely upon [F4the defence of justification][F4a defence under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013] if the publication is proved to have been made with malice.

(6)Subject to subsection (7) below a defendant in any such action shall not, by virtue of subsection (3) above, be entitled to rely on any matter or adduce or require any evidence for the purpose of establishing (whether under [F5section 14 of the Defamation Act 1996 [F6, section 9 of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021]] or otherwise) the defence that the matter published constituted a fair and accurate report of judicial proceedings if it is proved that the publication contained a reference to evidence which was ruled to be inadmissible in the proceedings by virtue of section 4(1) above.

(7)Subsection (3) above shall apply without the qualifications imposed by subsection (6) above in relation to—

(a)any report of judicial proceedings contained in any bona fide series of law reports which does not form part of any other publication and consists solely of reports of proceedings in courts of law, and

(b)any report or account of judicial proceedings published for bona fide educational, scientific or professional purposes, or given in the course of any lecture, class or discussion given or held for any of those purposes.

[F7(8)In the application of this section to Scotland—

(a)for the reference in subsection (1) to libel and slander there shall be substituted a reference to defamation;

(b)for references to the plaintiff and the defendant there shall be substituted respectively references to the pursuer and the defender;F8...

[F9(c)for references to a defence under section 2 of the Defamation Act 2013 there is substituted a reference to a defence under section 5 of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021, and

(d)for the reference to a defence under section 3 of the Defamation Act 2013 there is substituted a reference to a defence under section 7 of the Defamation and Malicious Publication (Scotland) Act 2021.]]]

I see the thread on site stuff is still closed.

Very interesting thread.
Great to see it here.
Thanks again to everyone who has added useful info.

Just going back to my car example.

Another thought to consider.

Let's say MN pulled the thread under threat of legal action.

Thing is we don't actually know what was being challenged.

Does the car manufacturer just want the thread deleted or this plus other new threads on the car heavily monitored or banned?

Or do they want more?

Do they want MN to disclose any/all information they hold (usernames current and previous plus email and IP address) for some/all people who posted on that thread?

What then?

MN thrives on this being an anonymous forum so posters can talk freely about literally twatting a spider, taking bikini bottoms off at a public swimming pool in a post partum fug and asking if having a penis beaker is normal.

If that comes out - ok embarrassing but not life changing.

But let's say a poster on the car thread worked for the manufacturer or a company in thrall to that manufacturer. If their identity was made public then it could cost them their career.

Not only that but it could also expose them to legal action from the manufacturer who was known to be especially litigious and had access to legal resources the average poster may not.

What do MN do then - especially- if hypothetically - this manufacturer had already made this request to provide user information in the past?

Is MN's reputation best served by caving in or fighting it, especially if the revelations of the car being crap is much bigger news on other platforms?

I obviously can't comment on what MNHQ would do, but I think it's fair to say doing nothing would not be a good look.

That said it's a good reminder not to tie your SM presence together through the same email address and user name (nor connect those email addresses to your real name).

So in the event MN were forced to disclose your email address all the litigant would get was [email protected] that when searched would not bring up any results against other SM platforms/work/home/hobbies because it was only ever used on MN (and if you wanted to go further also use a private VPN to hide your IP address).

Interesting to compare this to the case of the horse-puncher, who is all over the media despite being found not guilty by the court.

Apparently if you 'encourage' people to support a media source that is willing and legally able to report on a person's past legal troubles, that is something that the police can issue a warning over.

Sorry Police again. What an absolute shaaar.

Such a shame then that millions of people will have seen a Tweet showcasing a media outlet’s investigative reporting.

Let’s rearrange the following into a well known phrase or saying:

Horse. After. Door. Close. Stable. Bolted.

Core memory unlocked 🤩

That was something my grandad used to say, I never realised it was meant to be 'absolute shower' at the time. I thought shaarr was a words in its own right (see also bomsitit)

Honestly, you’d think Sorry Police would have something better to do with their time.

I mean, it’s not like they have the worst record on rape convictions in the country or anything.

Oh, wait a minute …

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/only-1-40-rapes-investigated-29273328?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target

Bomsitit? Bombs hit it?

I had an Irish boyfriend and after a few weeks asked him “what’s a concha?” because he liked to say “ya concha”. Years later I met an Irish nun who told me as a child she’d had to ask her father “Daddy, what’s a horya?”

Bomsitit? Bombs hit it?

Yeah 👍

Took me a moment to workout concha and horya 😄

Yeah, you need the “ya” in front of both words to get it! I did wonder at the time if the nun’s father’s lovely language is what drove her to the nunnery.

Fat Tony is trending on Twitter again. Wonder what that's about?