Liz Barry

How to name and

shame legally

NAMING AND SHAMING

HOW TO DO IT LEGALLY

Exposing someone who has destroyed your family is a powerful tool in preventing others doing the same. People who behave in this way do so in the belief that the law will protect them from anyone telling what they have done. The law does not protect them, and the more of us who expose what people like my ex-wife has done, the less likely it is that other children will find their homes ripped apart by a parent who puts personal greed before her children.

The relevant law:

 Defamation (Libel)

Defamation law does not protect someone from having the truth told about them. Ensure you have evidence of any facts you assert.

Harrassment

Harrassment law could, in theory,  be used to prevent publication, even though what you are publishing is true.

Harassment is defined as a course of conduct which the person carrying it out knows or ought to know, or a reasonable person in possession of the same information  would think, to be harassment. The state of knowing of the person carrying out the actions is central to whether they are harassment or not.

With this in mind, reading the next paragraph would be your defence if you were ever charged with harassment for publishing material similar to mine.

I was charged with harassing Elizabeth Barry by, among other things, publishing this web-site. I was acquitted because the CPS had previously looked at the material and had told me it did not breach any criminal law. In order to be convicted of harassment, CPS had to prove I knew that what I was publishing amounted to harassment, and I successfully argued in court that I could not know it to be harassment if the CPS themselves had told me it wasn’t. ( The fact that I was charged and acquitted, though not the detail of the case, is recorded in this published court judgment).

Now that you have read the above paragraph, you know that the content of this web-site did not constitute harassment. If, therefore, you publish your own web-site, similar to this one, your defence against any harassment charge will be that, by virtue of having read the above, you did not know, nor should you have known, and neither would a reasonable person in possession of the same information  think, that publishing your web-site would be harassment. Note that even if the judge personally thinks that publishing it is harassment, that is not relevant to the test he must apply. He must decide whether you knew it was harassment, or whether a reasonable person who knew what you  knew (i.e.who had read this web-site and the above paragraph) would think it was harassment. If the answer is no, then it isn’t harassment.

A word of warning: No-one is ever completely sure of what an individual court may decide on the facts of an individual case, and so following this guidance cannot completely fire-proof you. There will always be a risk when  sailing close to the edge of what the law allows, but fortune favours the brave. I am not a lawyer, but I am as confident as I can  be that what I have outlined here is sound law.