Hypocrisy writ large

The other day, I wrote that Angela Power-Disney had attempted to submit an unsolicited “character reference” to the court in the days leading up to John Paterson’s trial.

I pointed out the hilarious awfulness of it, but what I didn’t mention is the utter blinding hypocrisy of Angela’s claim that Paterson must be innocent.

Consider this:

Between November 2016 and November 2019, Paterson bombarded me relentlessly, sending me 855 hateful, malicious, and threatening emails. He sent me 88 emails in 2017, 58 in 2018, and 710 between January and November 2019, when he was arrested and remanded in custody. (He also made a number of threatening videos, blog comments, YouTube comments, and the like, but for today we’re looking at the email component.)

“Ah!” you say, “But how could Angela have known what Paterson was sending you privately?”

Simple: she received copies of a great many of the emails Paterson sent me.

So did Andrew Devine, Neelu Berry, Lee Cant, Kaley Einav, Sean Maguire, Matthew Taylor, Jake Clarke…many of the people who cheered Paterson on, and proclaimed his innocence.

“Bill and Ben”, as some will recall, were two of the alleged criminals Paterson threatened to send my way.

“Piggy’s Palace” was the name given to the farm of Canadian serial murderer Robert Pickton, who raped his victims, murdered them, and then allowed their remains to be eaten by the pigs on his farm. Paterson referenced it frequently, implying that this would be my fate, too.

I’ll spare you any more of the emails, which included threats that I would be fed alive into a woodchipper (though to be sporting, he would let me choose whether to go head-first or feet-first). There were also threats that I would be kidnapped, hanged, decapitated, chopped into little pieces, and more.

They arrived in my email inbox, often several in a day, for three full years. And each of them was cc’d to Paterson’s friends. Of course, not every email went to every friend—but a great many went out to people who’ve been publicly lamenting the outcome of his trial.

It’s a little hard to understand how not a single recipient of these ugly missives could see that Paterson was engaging in what could only be described as stalking behaviour.

You’d think that perhaps someone might have warned him to tone it down, if only for his own sake, but no.

They cheered him on. They claimed he was an innocent victim. They clapped him on the back and told him what a spiffing job he was doing, terrorising me and others.

Paterson’s so-called “friends” encouraged him, all right—straight into the arms of the police. And then they had the absolute gall to turn around and claim he’d been “fitted up” and falsely accused. He was mild as a lamb, pure as the driven snow. Never even received a traffic citation…even though by his own admission he’d spent time in Lewes Prison for malicious communications in the past.

Paterson’s “friends” used him mercilessly, even to the point of encouraging him to ignore his legal team’s advice to accept a plea deal which could have earned him a lesser sentence.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying Paterson wasn’t responsible for what he did. But I believe his “friends” must accept some culpability, too.

Will they, though?

In a pig’s eye.

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