Paedophile wins £20k Facebook privacy claim
A convicted paedophile has successfully sued Facebook for £20k in damages after claiming that the social network had invaded his privacy by hosting content naming him as a sex offender.
The man was first identified in April 2013 on a Facebook page called Keeping Our Kids Safe from Predators 2, after being released on license the year before having served five years of a 10 year jail term.
This post subsequently attracted 180 abusive comments, some of which included his address details and was followed up by the father of his victims posting an additional two messages to his Facebook profile alongside an image identifying the paedophile.
The sex offender initially demanded that the content be taken down and a donation of £7,500 be made to a sexual abuse charity but when Facebook refused he began court action claiming that the posts breached his human rights.
At the High Court in Belfast Mr Justice Stephens ruled that such material presented: “an obvious risk of vigilante violence given the inflammatory language,” adding that “It was an attempt to hunt a sex offender, to drive him from his home and to expose him to vilification.”
Facebook and Joseph McCloskey, founder of the Predators 2 page, were ordered to pay £15k in damages with Facebook facing a further £5k bill to cover the father’s posts.