A thread to go on about legal queries you might have

Here’s a legal query:

Why is this in court? Would it not just be a case that he’s breaking prison rules and would be punished by whatever internal methods they use (removal of privileges etc?) Or is there some part of his original conviction and sentence about not being able to use phones that he’s breached?

Also very confused by the timings mentioned in the story but that’s by the by

42? Time flies doesn’t it…

Yeah, just not taking the risk that it goes awol tbh.

I got a new one when I moved last year. In an act of unparalleled idiocy, I then accidentally cut up the new one instead of the old one and had to spend £20 on a replacement.

The moral of this tale is: don’t cut up your old one in case you cut up the new one by mistake.

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Thought this was a reply to the phone in the bum for a second…

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I’ve got just over a year left on my provisional. Might use that as a target to actually get a full licence. Cars will all be driverless as soon as I pass though, I just know it.

I’m loving this sequence of the court reporting on that case:

13:21 - DEFENDANT WAS ‘HIDING PHONE IN HIS BODY’, COURT HEARS

The prosecutor said the officer then went to get some latex gloves and a bowl.
When he returned the officer saw Watkins reaching into his underwear and after ten seconds produced a small white mobile phone.
Mr Wood said: "This must have been inserted in to the defendant’s anus.
“He was instructed to put the phone into the bowl.”
The eight centimetre GT Star mobile phone is shown to the jury by the court usher.
The exhibit is inside a clear plastic evidence bag.
The court heard Watkins’ cell was then search and a small charger was recovered.
The charger is also shown to jurors.

13:30 - COURT ADJOURNS FOR LUNCH

The case has been adjourned for a lunch break and will resume at 2.10pm

< VOMS > :nauseated_face::nauseated_face::nauseated_face:

Do you think judges feel daft banging those silly little hammers? Or is it the highlight of their day?

You’ll need to consult US counsel for that one, sorry

An extremely unwell person has - as part of an ongoing smear campaign - falsely accused some people I know, including several friends, of grooming / child pornography by submitting fake claims to a US based site (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children) and posting a screenshot with accompanying caption on their Instagram.

It’s an absolute fantasy, a total horror show, the people named who are aware of it are extremely stressed about being falsely accused of such sickening crimes and want to look into their legal options. I’ve no doubt they would succeed in defamation proceedings but due to the nature of what is being alleged I’m not sure if that’s the way to proceed, what legal proceedings would involve for them, or what the outcomes would be (imo this person is dangerous and is going to hurt someone eventually, idk if there’s anything that can be done at this juncture). I’m also not clear what their options are for free/affordable legal counsel in the first instance.

Any tips? Sorry this is so not a Christmas post and it’s so grim and bizarre but if anyone can help I’d be really grateful.

more info

Basically this person is clearly very unwell and it has manifested as an erratic but intense vendetta against a number of people (six in particular, but increasingly more to a lesser extent) in a community they felt shunned from. In many cases all these people have done is made a joke or called out this person’s disgusting / unhinged behaviour even if it was one instance some years ago. They will post rambling and nonsensical but very aggressive insults, pictures of them with rants underneath, completely made-up stories of hate crimes and sexual crimes just to try and get them in trouble; there’s also been very explicit racism, sexism and ableism which has resulted in a handful of posts being taken down but sadly most have remained up because of poor social media moderation.

They hadn’t posted in six months until Thursday but then they posted 56 times in a day. weirdly they posted a pic of their bleeding feet with a caption ranting about a person without naming them, then a picture of that person accompanied a caption about the OP’s feet - alternating so that if you recognise the information about the person in the rant then you can establish a pattern of mismatched captions on foot pics to the person whose picture is in the next post. The racism/ableism/xenophobia in particular is absolutely jawdropping, every single person identified has been accused of grooming underage people - but because their names aren’t mentioned and they’re only identified in the following post, with an unrelated caption, I’m not sure that any of those targeted would have grounds for legal action. Previously they have just ranted about these people underneath the pictures of them, they must have changed this deliberately. then the final post is the screenshot specifically naming the six people they fixate on the most and accusing them of being involved in sexual offences.

The posts across the board are so bizarre and nonsensical that I don’t even know what any authorities would make of them (the first section of both types of post - rant and foot stuff - are repeated throughout but the second half is different each time), and a lot of previous posts are written in Russian. This person’s social media usage and campaign against people has been concerning for a while (18 months?) without necessarily being overtly criminal. They have tried to fight at least one group of people they’ve hyperfixated on in the past and taken steroids to bulk up in advance in order to do so, it failed miserably but there’s clearly been some interest in turning to violence previously…

It’s so horrible scrolling through a mixture of graphic pictures of injuries and then pictures of people you know/care about, and being afraid that your picture might crop up. Ugh it’s awful I know this person is ill but I’m so afraid of what they might do if this isn’t shut down soon

Sounds horrible. What platform(s) are they posting this on?

WE’VE BACKTRACED IT

Amazing

Instagram is where almost all of this has happened. He’s also spammed YouTube channels and websites linked to the community with Russian nonsense as well as a brief flirtation with Twitter where I think he was directly @ ing people some really bigoted and hateful stuff in Russian. He has a side hustle in being a dick in Discord channels and posting screenshots of that too, but while there’s still a lot of rage/posturing as a victim, it’s not as intense as the stuff to do with people I know.

I think he’s directly messaged one person through Insta (and he’s also encouraged his friends to do the same) and maybe tagged the people he hates in one brief spell earlier this year, but most of this hasn’t involved contacting them directly, so I don’t think there’s a criminal case under the Malicious Comms Act.

Every time he goes quiet you naively hope that he’s moved on but then he’s back and more full of bile than ever before.

Does anyone know a bit about wills? Would rather discuss via PM if possible.

After 6 months without posting he’s returned with approximately 600 posts in 7 days and it’s escalated to the point of explicit violent threats (it’s clearly the rantings of someone living in a fantasy land, there’s almost no chance he will carry them out, but it’s fucking vile and even having been desensitised to his ravings the latest stuff turned my stomach). There’s also a bizarre tangent where he confesses to having explicit chats with minors, with screenshots of a few such conversations, and some horrendous racist abuse.

Any advice for reporting to the police? My friend and I have hundreds of screenshots of how it’s escalated over time and repeated harassment of the same people. We don’t personally know that much about him but we’ve got his name, the town he lives in and DOB. Is that an issue? I think my friend will actually submit it but I’m helping to collate everything.

Assume that we wouldn’t end up being named or anything, surely he’s incriminated himself in about 5 different ways, it’s just such an incredibly bizarre situation that I’m worried it might get dismissed. he’s clearly extremely sick but fucking hell I don’t know where this ends up if there’s no intervention

Could this part be reported to CEOP? I don’t know enough about what they do but seems to come under their remit. The rest feels like you’re really relying on getting a police officer who has the patience to get their head around the history in this case to recognise the escalation.

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I’m not clear if the minors in the case are UK-based (the one whose conversation he shared has either changed username or deactivated), I definitely think not all of them are and I don’t know how that changes things

CEOP works across border as far as I know: “CEOP works with child protection partners across the UK and overseas to identify the main threats to children and coordinates activity against these threats to bring offenders to account.”

I’d be tempted to report the grooming there (because I don’t think police will do much if they can’t identify the victims), and the direct harassment to the police.

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Thank you so much!! :heart: