Being defamed on Teams - what do I do

[Anglophobia]

I am being - effectively - trolled by someone on a Teams chat which was the result of a seminar, so has 100+ people on it. I gave the seminar. I am not in the organisation, everyone else is.

Now this is clearly someone having a mental health crisis (and a white middle aged man who couldn't deal with having his entitlement challenged). And so I am not rising to it. But he has doubled down, twice, and the organisation is talking about using 'appropriate discussion' but has not defended me. He's calling me a bigot and an extremist and in his latest missive, this morning - four days after the seminar - has compared me to Hitler.

Specifically he said that I have no qualification in this area: I have tons and that I did not refer to any peer-reviewed research in this area which is not true. I want the organisation to correct this on the chat and then delete him, because 100 people need to know that this is not true.

I want to escalate this with HR (?) or the Chief Executive, but are you going to tell me that I just need to ignore it?

It's also worth noting that this seminar was to cover a massive gap in the organisations knowledge which was completely shocking, in an area to do with equalities and inclusion.

Very interesting that he's challenged you and you went straight to

1. defamation
2. He's mentally ill

3 he's a troll
I thought you wanted to open up discussion so reply factually if he's telling lies about you or back up your facts or be honest where they are opinions presented as facts.

@TrashyPanda I believe so. But I have a meeting with someone on Thursday to review how this could have gone better, so will get confirmation then.

@Whingasaurus. As I said in my other posts, I didn't go straight to it, he repeated himself at increasing length and with increasing abuse before I did anything.

There was literally nothing in his messages to reply to, it was either unfounded abuse or utterly irrelevant comments (see my description through the medium of pub signs above). If you'd seen it on Facebook or Twitter, everyone would be saying, don't engage

My problem was with the organisation letting it stand and not refuting it.

Update just in case anyone else searches this thread because they are in the same situation.

I got apologised to, thoroughly.

More usefully, I had informal advice from a lawyer that a) distribution to this many people is publishing and b) this is defamation and they should have taken it down immediately.

I hope that reassures someone else later on.

Really glad this has been properly resolved.

Great update, thank you OP

Thanks for updating, OP, and that's a great outcome.