A kinder, gentler slanderer?

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a fiercely dedicated Hoaxtead pusher admitting that maybe, just possibly, all other things being equal and the tide don’t rise, she could have been wrong about something.

An interesting change of heart, indeed.

One is led to wonder whether this could have been inspired by the glum realisation that without the protection of anonymity, Kristie Sue Costa and her entire family are now at serious risk of being on the receiving end of a rather expensive lawsuit.

This is what can happen to people who publish terrible lies about others, and recent research indicates that international borders are no real barrier to suits for defamation. Perhaps the thought of losing her charming Cape Cod home put the fear of God into Ms Costa?

Or perhaps we are judging too harshly.

Maybe the woman who has just spent an entire year defaming a man she’d never met, accusing him and his entire family of engaging in the foulest possible crimes against babies and children, had a heart-to-heart with Jesus and had a ‘St. Paul on the road to Damascus’ moment. Scales falling from eyes, that sort of thing.

Seems unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

We have to say that we agree with Kristie Sue on one point:

We are going to have to find some common ground without the trolling, hatred, name calling and threats. This gets us nowhere.

Absolutely true. While we could make a compelling argument that we’ve been the recipients of too many death threats, rape threats, doxxing threats, and so forth to even count, we’ve noticed a few instances lately of some very ugly material heading in the opposite direction.

(We want to clarify that it doesn’t come from anyone associated with this blog, and that we don’t think it’s at all helpful. If any of our 1,000+ daily viewers happen to know who’s responsible, we’d be grateful if you’d have a word.)

However, we still contend that the largest and most damaging source of “trolling, hatred, name calling and threats” has been Dearman Does Hampstead itself, and the blogs like it.

This raises the question: if Kristie Sue is true to her word about changing the narrative, and does remove her defamatory attacks, both on her blog and on her Facebook page, how ought we to respond, as a blog and as a community?

Based on the support we’ve received from our readers, we’ve already begun to explore the potential for a lawsuit. Nothing has been done yet that cannot be undone.

Ultimately, though, the decision as to whether to go forward won’t rest entirely with us. It will be up to 2 people: Kristie Sue herself, who must decide which direction she wants to take; and RD, Kristie Sue’s primary victim, who must decide whether any new direction is satisfactory, or simply too little, too late.