ANM

It is a long time since we’ve used our right to free speech to publish about the backlash from our Steiner Human Rights activism. To cut a very long story short, the replacement of open debate with covert harassment by skeptics and humanists that started in 2011, eventually left us no choice but to relocate back to the UK. Dr Andrew Lewis and Melanie Byng continued in their refusal to stop their co-ordinated and networked attempts to wreck our livelihood with lies even after we had asked them again and again to stop, even trying when we arrived in early 2013. We eventually issued a claim just before statute of limitation at the end of that year.

Those with experience will be familiar with the slow churning waves of legal process.

Only weeks before the eventual five day hearing, the Judge had appeared to understand the covert harassment we had been subjected to. When we tried to re-introduce harassment claims amended out earlier for lack of visible evidence, he stated that he could see “a number of obvious candidates” of the defendants “covertly inciting organisations and individuals to shun the claimants by portraying them as dangerous and mentally unstable.”

We nevertheless had to go to the five day hearing as Litigants in Person in March 2015, without the benefit of those claims, since he would not allow them back in the case in spite of the above: many will not be surprised to hear that the case was lost. The mechanisms of networked covert abuse laid out in the evidence were not understood as background to defamation. The Judge even commented in his judgement in July 2015, that Angel couldn’t see any disagreement without thinking it was malicious, thus ridiculing the effects of years of networked covert harassment on a target without mercy. He even reproduced in his judgement quotes from email communications which had been shown to be outright lies, yet presented them as facts.

When catapulted into an Orwellian nightmare, it’s all too easy to feel disheartened and lose hope but then, as we were googling how to prepare for an oral argument in the Court of Appeal in London (March 15th – please come [** update 8/3/16: our hearing has been moved to March 22nd **]) we happened to come across a post by none other than Simon Singh. He wrote it on Sense about Science when he was refused his appeal over the meaning of the word “bogus” in his case, as a defendant against the British Chiropractic Association who basically claimed that he was intimating dishonesty/fraud when he used that word in The Guardian.

We couldn’t help but be encouraged to see that Simon Singh had himself been in the position of having to prepare for oral argument in defence of his own appeal in 2009 on grounds of a word having been unjustifiably interpreted at the extreme of possible usages. He wrote and published about his use of the word “bogus” and his continued fight, about the way he had come to try and see the case as just another work project, in spite of his personal discomfort, as he believed the principle was worth fighting for: of open publication, rather than trying to shut down debate. The rest, as they say, is history.

We have not published about our case up till now because everybody says “you don’t publish and take legal action”. It does seem hard to imagine, beyond necessary considerations of anonymity, what genuinely open justice could have to fear from factual exposition. Nevertheless although we did not and don’t agree with this opinion, in this supremely intimidating case we were persuaded by our former lawyers not to publish during proceedings.

Simon Singh also said that he would be prepared to take the case right up to the European Court of Human Rights, and “one-man free speech engine” Robert Dougans, said that if he did, his firm, Bryan Cave, would do it pro bono for him. As we read on, we were drawn into the ensuing triumphant explosion of enthusiasm for the principle of free speech, supported by an outpouring of support from the bright lights of rationalism.

And that certainly got us thinking more about the fact that we are the ones who believe in the principle of free speech and open debate, and our enemies, for such they clearly wish to be, are the ones trying to shut that debate down, the better to smear our mental health in the background, including to many of those same bright lights.

It also made us realise that we can and must stay true to that principle. We cannot change that Judge’s opinion, but that doesn’t mean we have to allow British Courts to take a family’s home without, like Simon Singh, raising the maximum objection we are able to under the circumstances; he, with the vocal support of the shining rationalist lights, we, probably with their continuing silent acquiescence. Or maybe the principle will stand for something after all. We must find out.

Simon Singh was hauled over the coals for his intentions in using of the word “bogus” to describe chiropractic treatments. Our own vituperation, as Claimants, centred on the word “grooming”.

Back in the Summer of 2011, when we came to the UK because Angel’s mother was dying, Mrs Byng had made an approach towards our eleven year old child who had become school-averse following severe bullying compounded by unjust exclusion from a Steiner school. She sent her son with a present for the child, and to tell her he had come in order to persuade her to try out the school he went to after his own negative Steiner experience. Mrs Byng then abandoned those offers without ever explaining why, stonily freezing out that child who had just begun to consider the possibility of trying this potential new school. It was incredibly shocking to us that someone could behave in this highly inappropriate way, but at the time this took place, we sucked it up and went on with our lives.

But as soon as we published the piece Mrs Byng had suggested Angel write regarding Steiner schools on an influential blog she had connections with, the Local Schools Network, the documents and emails we gained access to through the process of legal disclosure show that she immediately warned her friends and fellow Steiner critics off us, who had all previously lauded our work and efforts.

We were then straight away viciously mobbed by those exact people whom her disclosure shows her to have immediately and strongly encouraged to incite wide shunning of us, while she, appearing silent, actually joined in through emails in the background, breaching our privacy, spreading lies and disabled abuse about us in order to persuade her colleagues that we were not to be trusted about anything, including our work on, and experience of Steiner. Prior to disclosure we obviously deduced these facts from the illogical and contradictory mobbing statements of our visible attackers, and wrote our Open Letter in response, but the disclosure of these emails proved beyond doubt what had been going on in the background.

These actions from someone specifically advertising post-cult help led us to write this in our Open Letter (Thetis Mercurio is the name Mrs Byng uses on Twitter):

In stark contrast, however, to the extremely careful analysis given to the word “bogus”, in BCA v Singh to avoid putting words into Singh’s mouth, skeptic Dr Andy Lewis, humanist Melanie Byng and their team of lawyers, including Singh’s own solicitor Robert Dougans of Bryan Cave, and Barrister Jonathan Price of Doughty Street Chambers, deliberately altered the intended meaning of the word grooming in their Defence document, and throughout the proceedings, removing the context in order to infer sexual abuse, which they then aggressively pretended was what we had meant.

They initially did this by altering the punctuation, and removing the other half of the sentence:

Notice that this last full stop isn’t within square brackets, stating therefore that this sentence naturally ended there where it clearly didn’t.

You may think that since the Judge mentioned in his judgement that the second part of this sentence was only stated in our closing argument, we added it recently. Although we cannot prove that it was part of the article since the beginning (October 2011) – we had no reason to imagine that anyone would attempt such an underhand distortion – the Internet Archive clearly shows that it has been there, unaltered, as part of the public record since the 20th of February, 2012.

It is entirely clear in the original article that what is being described is an inappropriate and exploitative personal approach to a child, within the context of authoritarian and controlling behaviours commonly observed in and around cults, such as Steiner schools (the defendants have many times publicly referred to these schools as being part of a cult). The Judge even quoted where we had referred to it as being similar to the behaviour of the school. It’s best to display the actual sentence, as  the judgement again quotes a further tampered version from the Defence:

Although we published a lot about the treatment of our children and ourselves by the school, which “high profile campaign” led to Human Rights mediation and eventual settlement, sexual abuse was never a part of it. Mrs Byng knew that very well.

Apart from the perjury of making a declaration of truth on such a fit-up, it seems obvious that to artificially restrict the use of the word grooming as relates to children, to sexual grooming as the Judge has done, is a potentially dangerous mis-definition, especially to children being non-sexually abused and exploited in a cult setting. Neither is such a narrow definition borne out in the copious references to Daesh grooming children and young people, for instance, or in other common usage of the term.

So we must go to our oral appeal, as Simon Singh did, in wide-eyed disbelief at the destruction of the same legal principle he was fighting for, by some of the very people who shouted so loud for the principle in 2009. The tactics used by these influential defendants, of intentionally shutting down debate in order to smear and harass in the background, also meant that by the time we were forced to relocate our young family back to the UK and take legal action, they could handily play the victim card as defendants.

This again obfuscates the similarity with BCA v Singh, where the three learned Judges who overturned Judge Eady’s ruling on the word “bogus” (as inferring deliberate deception), highlighted the chiropractors’ reluctance to debate openly and push towards legal action: this was in spite of Singh’s offer of amends, which included a space to reply in the Guardian.

Our Open Letter (negatively characterised as “extraordinary” by the Judge) documented a vicious mobbing by an after-cult community and specifically asked for feedback and comment about the gate-keeping it pointed to. We were, and still remain, the party seeking to engage in open debate, and they were, and still are, the parties seeking to shut it down.

Notwithstanding these facts, and while claiming to have read the original piece, the Judge used this tampered quote liberally in his judgement, referring to it numerous times, and cited it as justification for the defendant’s actions, and as a reason to allow qualified privilege (i.e., reply to attack) – even though Mrs Byng’s covert incitement to shun us, and extensive campaign of covert smearing, started well before we even wrote that Open Letter in self-defence.

So we do not say lightly that we take our own courage from Singh’s resolve, as a candle in the dark: a timely reminder of the principle of free and open debate and of the courage often needed to uphold it. Simon Singh’s writing at such a difficult time for him has reminded us that not only can we publish about it, but the principle itself demands that we must return to publication.

Although it wasn’t the “only” reason we lost the case (more on that later) those seeking to be our enemies have been rewarded with costs of £240,000 for tampering with what we wrote about actual exploitation, to create their innuendo of sexual abuse, and then project it onto us. Unlike Singh, we and our children are to suffer severe financial punishment because we used our Article 10 rights to free expression, always offering right of reply, as our only defence from a networked and co-ordinated campaign of covert harassment while we were out of jurisdiction.

This injustice will prevail unless we can persuade the Court of Appeal that the principle at stake here, to foster free and open debate, is worth fighting for, and as such should not, does not, and cannot alter, depending on who the parties are. Sticking to the principle is the only way to guard against corruption and will reliably expose the motives of those seeking to close the debate down.

Although it is highly intimidating to be punished by the State for writing and offering right of reply, the principle itself demands that we show you what Dr Lewis said himself about altering the meaning of words at the time of Singh’s appeal:

 

 

NB: the photo of the candle was taken from here.

Andy Lewis, Article 10, Article 6, article 8, BCA, Bryan Cave, candle in the dark, Court of Appeal, Cults, Doughty Street Chambers, featured, Freedom of Speech, harassment, Human Rights, humanism, Jonathan Price, justice, libel reform, Melanie Byng, mental health, open debate, Robert Dougans, sense about science, Simon Singh, skepticism, skeptics, Steiner, The Guardian, Waldorf

By ANM

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