‘We shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of garbage’

TWO social media trolls have issued grovelling apologies and one has agreed to pay costs of hundreds of pounds after falsely accusing a senior deputy of being a child abuser.

Former Policy & Resources Committee president Peter Ferbrache has called out false accusations made online against him. (Picture by Peter Frankland, 34014227)

Former Policy & Resources president Peter Ferbrache accepted an early apology from one of the two men who had included him on a list of several alleged child abusers which began circulating on Facebook in mid-November.

The other man avoided court proceedings by the skin of his teeth after writing to Deputy Ferbrache late last week, just hours before he had been summonsed to appear in the Royal Court, and agreeing to pay costs of more than £600 and never to repeat the accusation which he accepted was ‘wholly defamatory, completely inappropriate, inaccurate and unacceptable’.

Deputy Ferbrache agreed to share his story with the Guernsey Press because he said it was high time that somebody stood up publicly against social media trolls who believed they could make up any accusation they liked against States members and others in high-profile positions locally.

‘If you’re a States member, you’re going to be in the public spotlight, but there are limits, and this was just beyond the pale,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t having them saying I was part of a paedophile sex abuse ring. There was just no way I was having that.’

Police were so concerned that they took the unusual step of issuing a statement dismissing claims of an investigation into the high-profile names circulated online, but Deputy Ferbrache pursued the matter further.

He estimated that taking a defamation case through the courts could cost most people tens of thousands of pounds, but he said his accusers had picked on the wrong person, given his robust character and decades of experience as a litigator.

‘I’m in a fortunate position. First, I can afford it. Second, I know the law. Third, I don’t mind having a go,’ he said.

‘A lot of people, for one or more of those reasons, are not going to go through with a case.

‘But I don’t mind standing up and being counted and I wasn’t having these idiots hiding behind a screen saying these things.’

Deputy Ferbrache’s youngest grandchild is seven years old. He also has teenage grandchildren. He said that social media trolls never stopped to think about the families of those on the receiving end of their defamatory and vile accusations.

He pursued the case against the two men partly for the sake of his family, although his adult children assured him it was up to him.

‘I said to my kids I had to bother with it because if these people do this to me they’ll do it to somebody else, and it takes only one person to think “there’s no smoke without fire” and an innocent person’s good reputation can be affected.

‘If you’re a States member you have to put up with all sorts, including criticism of course, but you shouldn’t have to put up with this sort of garbage.’