The following was published by un-convicted baby killer Billy Middleton on the 23rd of November 2010 on the WAP website and had been written by Sandra Lean
It has been reproduced below for study and educational purposes
………………………………………………………………………………………
ADMINISTRATORS NOTE: I HAVE BEEN SENT THE FOLLOWING BY SANDRA AT 20:59
It is with extreme sadness and regret that I am making this post, but the events of this afternoon have left me with no choice. Whether people accept it or not, posts on internet sites have real life consequences.
Almost two months ago, at the beginning of October, Stephanie requested that Simon’s caseblog be closed, pending the appeal. I explained at the time, on the forum, that this is quite common practice in the run up to an appeal. At that time, there were also discussions regarding taking down all facebook related content connected with Simon’s case (which Wrongly Accused Person had no connection with whatsoever) as Stephanie felt she was being attacked from many angles. The forum at Wrongly Accused was not one of the places this was happening.
Stephanie was happy with this arrangement at the time, and posted to that effect on the forum.
It was confirmed on October 3rd that Billy had closed Simon’s caseblog, and put up a message stating that this was pending the appeal. For reasons which will become clear, however, he advised Stephanie that he would be writing to Simon asking him to confirm future changes, etc, to the site.
The following series of events covers recent claims about the closing of the site:
November 17th at 12.52: an email was received at Wrongly Accused, addressed to Billy, which began, “Dear Billy, you may or may not have received a letter from Simon requesting that his site be taken down from Wrongly Accused.” It goes on, “We ask that you please remove all content relating to Simon’s case, and that the thread on the wrongly accused be locked.”
November 18th at 15:40 (less than 27 hours later) another email was received stating that Billy “appeared to be ignoring emails.” A facebook post was also made, on Stephanie’s behalf, asking that Billy read his “private emails.”
November 19th 10.48am: a request was made to let Stephanie know if Simon’s letter had been received, and on November 20th, it was confirmed that it had not yet been.
November 20th at 10.04am: Stephanie posted on the forum “Simon has been asking for over a week to have his caseblog closed down completely and for this thread to be locked.” This post was less than 72 hours after the initial email regarding a letter Billy “may or may not have received.”
November 21st:The post was re-posted on the McKie site
November 22nd, at 1.09 (which is 12.09, real time): Stephanie posted “After two weeks of Billy ignoring Simon’s express wishes and requests…..” (this was 5 days after the initial contact.)
November 22nd at 6.12pm (5 hours after the above post) an email was received at Wrongly Accused from Stephanie as follows: “It would appear you have received Simon’s letter. Therefore, please remove entirely his caseblog. I think you will find, if he asked for a message to be put up, he meant within the thread, bearing in mind he is in prison and does not understand how it all works. We wish the site to no longer be found in a search, it’s that simple.”
This was the first reference to the site “no longer being found in a search.”
However, Simon’s letter had, indeed, been received by then, and a clear difficulty had arisen. It would be both unethical and unprofessional to post the letter in its entirety without Simon’s permission, but the pertinent parts state the following:
“I understand the website is closed pending appeal but other bits relating to the site are open. Is that right? If so, please stop everything to do with my case, and that includes forums, walls or whatever else people insult each other on. Also, could you change the “closed pending appeal” to the following:
“In the interests of justice and pending Mr Hall’s forthcoming appeal, this website is temporarily closed. Simon would like to thank everyone for their support and their continued interest in his case.”
We were faced with a dilemma – Simon’s letter does not talk about taking everything down, or making his case unable to be found in a search – indeed, he is quite clear that he wants a message displayed on his site, and has included the word “temporarily,” which did not feature before. He asks that everything be “stopped.” The caseblog had been closed since early October, and the forum was locked on November 21st, so Simon’s requests had already been dealt with.
Stephanie’s requests, on the other hand, had changed, and continued to change, from closing the site, to taking everything down completely, to ensuring nothing could be found in a web search (something, incidentally, we could not guarantee, even if we took the entire site down.) Even her last email is unclear – how could a message from Simon be posted in “a thread” if the forum had also been removed?
The disingenuous portrayal of delay, posted publicly within 72 hours, was deeply concerning, as there had been previous instances of such behaviour.
Between October 2nd and October 4th, at a time where I was extremely busy, I had received 20 emails from Stephanie, between private messages and those which had come through wrongly accused, along with a number of texts. I had not had time to respond to these, but Stephanie concluded that I was “ignoring” her.
I wrote a long email on October 4th, explaining the circumstances. Part of that email, however, referred to a post Stephanie had put on the Wrongly Accused forum meantime, in her belief that I was ignoring her. (Note this is only a 48 hour period.) I wrote, “I’m also interested in why you chose to use my facebook post (adapted) to post on wrongly accused. Following from Shirley’s post as it does, it makes it look like one of the “un-named” individuals is me. I have never attacked you, criticised you or made any other negative comment about you anywhere – I may simply be reading too much into it, but that is certainly how it came across.”
Stephanie responded:“….yes, I did use your post on facebook on the wrongly accused, and when I did I knew you would be more annoyed over that than you are about what I am going through at the moment. And I have a couple of friends that will verify that. “
I was extremely concerned at this, as it appeared that Stephanie was happy to have me painted in a dishonest light, simply because I had not responded immediately to her emails. Other things going on behind the scenes had alerted me to the possibility that Stephanie was not being entirely straight with me.
The next difficulty arose over the claims that outsider/smiffy was Billy. John Lamberton was posting some pretty damning claims about things Stephanie had purportedly told him. Worried that these claims might reflect badly on Stephanie, I attempted to pre-empt further claims by suggesting a possible source of John’s assumption that outsider/smiffy was Billy. Stephanie immediately PM’d me and emailed me, but before I had even had a chance to read her messages, and respond, she had posted on the forum claiming that my post was “untrue.” I emailed Stephanie privately, although she continued to post. Part of my last message, on November 15th was, “Before I had had a chance to respond to your messages, you were posting that what I had said was “untrue.” By the time I had clarified the situation, you were still claiming in your emails that what I had said was “untrue.” It seems to me you simply did not understand, or chose not to believe, what I was saying. There’s nothing I can do about that – what hurts is that you could not step back, knowing me as I thought you did, and ask yourself, is there perhaps another explanation for this. Nope, instant public condemnation, in the belief that you were being attacked, when, in fact, I was trying to defend you.”
I finished this email by saying, “I can only finish by saying that I am truly heart-broken at how these events have panned out. That your words are being used to paint me as dishonest and unreliable, and that in turn is being used to undermine Luke’s case, is probably one of the worst experiences in all of this. I thought you were my friend.”
On both of these occasions, Stephanie had made public accusations, apparently without any thought of consequence, and was doing so again regarding the closing/removal of Simon’s site.
We had decided that the best course of action would be to ignore the public accusations and write to Simon for further clarification, however this evening’s events have forced a decision based on other factors.
Entering a local store this evening, I was approached by a man who greeted me with the following:
“You are one f*cking sick little bitch. How long did you think folk were going to take your lies and p*sh? Weren’t happy destroying one family’s life, eh? Now you’ve started on somebody else’s. How many more you twisted little f*ck? Yours is coming, don’t you worry about it. You’ll get yours you twisted little c**t – there’s plenty just waiting their chance.”
I assume this came about as a result of various claims being made on various websites. In principle, I would not back down to such bullying and threatening behaviour. However, I have to live here, as do my family, and in view of the fact that Simon’s appeal is imminent, it is with a very heavy heart that I have asked Billy to remove everything relating to Simon’s case from the site.
I would emphasise wholeheartedly that my support for Simon and Stephanie is unwavering, and I hope with all my heart that the appeal is successful, and they are able to begin to build their life together, as they should be.