Death of a troll

Just two days after she was doorstepped by a Sky News reporter and confronted over her hate-filled tweets directed against the McCann family, Brenda Leyland was found dead, apparently at her own hand. Outside her own family, I wonder how many people will mourn her loss.


She was one of a small army of trolls who went online, usually, as in Ms Leyland's case, anonymously, to suggest that the McCanns were not only guilty of child neglect by leaving her alone to be abducted while they enjoyed a candlelit dinner some 50 metres away, but also of murdering her themselves. Presumably they couldn't be guilty of both- you take your choice. In this disgraceful hounding of an innocent family struggling with the most terrible grief, these trolls were joined by several national newspapers, most notably the Daily and Sunday Express. The newspapers were brought to book to account for their foul accusations and forced to admit there was not a shred of evidence to support their claims. The newspapers were heavily fined for their lies, but until last Thursday the individuals who took up the torch from the print media remained untouchable, free to express the hope that the McCanns themselves should be killed, even that their remaining children should be abducted.


This morning on The Today Programme a learned professor from Northern Ireland expressed his surprise that, living in a charming little village in the Leicester countryside, Ms Leyland fell into the category of internet troll. Normally, it would seem, profiling suggests they would come from sink estates, despicable low-life Billy-no-mates types who have a history of narcissism and sociopathy and far too much time on their hands. Now we can see that this sort of sickening behaviour transcends the class barriers.


Why did she kill herself? Did she anticipate the shitstorm of acrimony that was about to fall on her head and feel even death was preferable to that? Maybe she was already nursing a severe depression and this was her last straw. Perhaps, I like to think, in her last moments on this Earth, she apprehended some of the huge hurt she had poured on the McCanns.


This poor family has experienced the worst form of grief imaginable: to have a child snatched away by a predator; the guilt accompanying their own actions and worst of all, to have no resolution to the mystery of her disappearance. So my message to anyone seeking to dish out any more opprobrium on those wretched people is:
 LEAVE THE MCCANNS ALONE. THEY'VE SUFFERED ENOUGH.