DID CYBER-BULLIES KILL SIMON ABBOTT

Dear Readers,

This is Part 1 of an extensive investigation that will hopefully help to one day make cyber-bullying a criminal offence in every civilised country in the world.

NOBODY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DIE THIS WAY 

There’s lots more to come so keep looking at my Blog

It's a terrible shock shock to find a Contact Jersey Police urgently message on your blog. Cold sweat floods over you. You don’t want to phone because you know what’s coming. Your 47 year old son, your only remaining relative in the United Kingdom, lives in Jersey and you are half the world away in South Africa. The situation is made even worse because his sister and only sibling had died in England in particularly tragic circumstance four years earlier, aged 42. Then it was your son and not the Police who phoned, making it marginally less harrowing, if that was at all possible – Jon Abbott

Simon Abbott

         This is the story of evil, vicious and unrelenting cyber-bullies that all the indications are effectively killed Simon Abbott. He was so terribly slandered on social media for the last two years of his life that he was scared to leave his home unaccompanied.   

         The bullies sunk to such depths they even mocked the death of his sister.

         In a desperate plea for help to his advocate he wrote that he estimated that as many as 500 000 people had seen a series of Tweets posted over just one week-end calling him a con man, when there was not a shred of evidence to support this.

         Right up until the day he died they were still at it - another sarcastic post appeared with the aim of belittling him.

         When somebody dies it’s too late to say I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it. Not that any of the bullies in this case showed the slightest sign of remorse.

         All this happened in the tiny, tax haven of Jersey, the English speaking island of 100 000 people in the Channel Islands just off the British and French coasts.

         Shockingly the bully leading the charge was none other than one of the island’s well known personalities and BBC Radio Jersey presenter Murray Norton. He was ably assisted by his photographer friend and member of the National Union of Journalists, Ian le Sueur.

Murray Norton

          And they are both denying they did anything wrong.

Ian Le Sueur

         They set a defamatory snowball rolling that gathered followers at a frightening pace. Many of them assumed that as Norton was part of the reputable British Broadcasting Corporation whatever he said must be true.  

Cyber-bulling is mostly associated with teenagers, but as this case proved people of any age can be just as juvenile and equally as cruel and unfeeling.

BREAKING: 30//10/2013 Norton announced on his 9-12 radio slot that today would be his last for the foreseeable future.

         One admitted in court papers that he called Simon a con merchant based on  nothing more than comments made by others on Facebook while another one conceded she had made a similar allegation at the suggestion of Mr Murray Norton.


MAIL ONLINE'S story

         And while all this was going on the BBC did nothing to stop it even though Norton’s boss, who claims to be a social media wizard, was aware of what was happening. The Jersey Police that deletes inappropriate posts from its own Facebook page also turned a blind eye in spite of the fact that Simon twice made complaints to it about being assaulted as a direct result of this bullying.

Simon was defenceless against this onslaught which began purely to stifle his efforts to successfully run the Samantha Abbott Trust he set up in memory of his sister (See my post Benjamin Squirrel – funeral organiser from Hell). In 2009 she leapt to her death from the top of a car park building in England after giving birth to her first and only child.

     

    Samantha had been suffering from post natal depression and that’s why Simon started a trust to raise awareness of this and to collect money to assist women in similar circumstances. It was registered with the Jersey Financial Services Commission as a not for profit organisation.

         People, many of whom Simon had never met, were whipped up on Twitter and Facebook into such a frenzy of hatred that violence was a constant threat.

         Here’s an example taken from court records.

Edgar Steinberg : From what I read I would  like to see this man being hit on his face. Twice. Honestly.

Simon Soar: I’d donate money to charity to see that.

An example of what Simon had to contend with

         Describing his feelings just after his sister died Simon wrote: It wasn’t a very good time for me because she had told me that she was having the baby to replace our Mum who had died not long before that. It was a huge shock when I suddenly got a call from the Police to say that my sister had taken her own life.

Another example of the "Destroy Simon" campaign

         A self employed software developer he had no previous experience of raising money for charity. As a result his initial projects turned out to be too ambitious to be practical, mainly because he kept trying to break a Guinness world record by using social media as his promotional vehicle. Then too, many people volunteered to help, but when it came to doing the work he got more excuses than assistance.

On the basis of these failures the bullies decided he must be a con man and they used social media to tell the whole world this, as if it was an established fact.

This scuppered any further money making ideas he had including perhaps his most envied one, the Jersey Fashion Show. At this he planned to auction clothes he obtained from celebrities.

What must have surprised his detractors immensely was that he was extremely successful. Donations of clothes kept coming from people like David and Victoria Beckham, Lilly Allen and many others.

And BBC Jersey’s website carried a glowing report on this.

Part of the story on BBC Jersey's website

It looked ominously as though it was no coincidence that Norton claimed to be an expert in charity fund raising where he’s been directly involved with over 2-million pounds of local fund raising.

            Had Simon trespassed on his sacred patch, was the question crying out to be answered.

         At one stage Norton challenged my son on Facebook to put the items you claim to have from the famous to good use. I’ll auction them for some people in real need, instead of fake events that help no one, even those of us trying to raise funds.

         Inevitably the bashing both figuratively and physically took its toll on Simon’s health. He wrote that in August 2011 he was signed off work and am in receipt of sickness benefit from anxiety and stress.

         He had almost come to the end of the line in his efforts to make the Samantha Abbot Trust a charitable reality while his own life continued to be bullied away.

         The medical diagnosis I gathered was that Simon died of a heart attack. But Jersey’s Viscount who conducts inquests as the coroner is currently getting expert advice as to whether or not the cyber-bulling contributed to Simon’s death.

         However all the evidence that I obtained shows that there can be no doubt that this was the case. My own doctor told me that if a person with a heart problem was subjected to excessive stress this could easily tip them over the edge.

          AND THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I  BELIEVE
                          HAPPENED TO SIMON 
                                            

*In future episodes I’ll tell you what the bullies said about Simon; how the BBC protected their presenter; how a bank took the opposite view to the Corporation as well as the many other aspects of this case, which is likely to be a long running series on my Blog.