Revenge: Served Hot & The Aftermath

SA:

What do you mean 'hearsay.' They all (removed) knew.

CR:

Hearsay means that we only have your belief that they knew. As I say, it does not matter as the grounds for dismissal would not be affected.

We will not take this forward because the grounds given for dismissal are that you brought the company into disrepute. This would be unarguable with the reported loss of business following the uproar caused by the website's contents.

Your second wish was to sue Mr David Holden for his posting of videos, images and obscene comments about you on his website without your consent. The argument used against this would be that you must have been aware of at least the images which would appear to have been taken with consent and by implication you would have known of the videos. However, we think you would have a reasonable chance of winning your argument on the videos and comments side of the claim.

The reason we are not prepared to take this forward is that Mr Holden matches a phrase widely used in the legal world of 'A Man of Straw.' His apartment and car were both owned by the company and leased back to him at a nominal rate as an employment incentive. From a cursory glance he also appears to have very little in savings. His reputation has suffered severely and he is unlikely to achieve another high-paying position. Any judgement made against him would have to accept that he could only make very small reparation payments over a very long period of time. My firm would not be likely to recoup the cost of providing you with legal representation. If other women mentioned on the site also bring a case against him splitting the payments between a number of individuals would make each amount even smaller.

SA:

(entire comment removed)

CR:

The case against Mr Andeson, currently your spouse, is much more interesting and complex and has some merit in a number of ways. Firstly your statement that he was the owner of the website attributed to Mr Holden; secondly that Mr Andeson exposed to public view a private website containing obscene and depraved material of yourself and others with malicious intent; and thirdly that he sent you a threatening email that had a serious impact on your mental health and well-being.

To take those points in order. The website was registered under a fictitious name and the payment method extremely well hidden. It might be possible to track this but it would be expensive. Also acting against this is the fact that Mr Holden had a named account on the site which appeared to be in continuous use, both for posting items and for messaging a number of people who can be shown to be acquaintances of Mr Holden. There are also the photos of a number of women, including yourself, performing an act of fellatio whilst smiling at the photographer and so showing that they were fully aware of what they were doing. These photographs were taken by Mr Holden and would be taken as proof that it was Mr Holden's website.

SA:

That's (removed) rubbish. I did not know he was taking a photo of me sucking his (removed).

CR:

The photo looks to have been taken from a couple of feet away and you were definitely smiling at and posing for a visible camera. Saying that you had no knowledge is not going to help or make any difference.

SA:

(removed)

CR:

This is your final warning. Please moderate your language or we will terminate this meeting. I know you are upset and angry but I am simply presenting you with facts and you should not malign me for doing so.

The other part of the second point, that it had malicious intent would have two arguments. If it was accepted that Mr Holden was the website's owner then the damage would have also been to himself and he would have no reason to make its content available which would point to it being an unlikely accident and not malicious. That would make the second argument, that the content was made available by an outside party who wished damage on those featuring on the site the more likely. The problem is in proving who that other person was. Conceivably it could be any of the husbands of the women featured or even an enemy or business rival of Mr Holden. The website's logs appear to prove that all activity was Mr Holden's, though I suspect that those logs could have been altered.

There is no doubt that your mental health has suffered in a number of ways along with your physical health and well-being. You are state that you are afraid to go on to the street because people spit on you and shout abuse and obscenities. Local shops delay and try not to serve you. You can no longer go to a bar because people try to start a fight and because of this your friends are starting to avoid you. It is horrendous, but there is no evidence linking Mr Andeson to this.

I agree that I cannot think of anyone else who would have the skill or desire to do this to you, but that does not, in itself, constitute proof.

The third part fails on lack of evidence.

SA:

(unintelligible)

CR:

So for these reasons I regret we will not be willing to take this forward. Thank you and I will now see you back to reception.

Chris Robinson - Personal Meeting with Mr Ian Donovan

Not for distribution. Notes taken from memory. Not contemporaneous.

I realised how little I knew about computer usage in these situations and after my rather unpleasant time with Ms Anderson arranged a meeting with Ian Donovan who is a personal friend and computer expert.

I described the case (anonymised) as an example and the difficulties encountered in taking copies of the document that had detailed what had been done to our client.

Ian wondered about the mindset of someone who would basically issue a confession but I pointed out that the overwhelming urge in every case like this was to tell the other party that everything they would suffer was a deliberate act of revenge and not down to chance. This always overrode common sense but what worried me here was that the way it had been done as it was outside my usual experience.

He said that disabling screen dumps was very easy, only requiring a registry change (?) to the print screen key. He then asked if the document had been available for the entire 30 minutes mentioned in my synopsis. I said that it was believed it had been less than half that, but no note of the time had been kept so we could not be sure.

Ian said the document being available for less than the stated time made his way of doing the deletion more likely. He would have arranged each page as a separate pdf with all anti copy security enabled and with each move to the next page deleting the previous one. The last page would have been innocuous or even blank. The 30 minute time limit would have been a lie just to make the reader think they would have time at the end to take copies, maybe with the camera on a mobile if everything else failed.

He then surprised me by saying he knew of a recent website that had become notorious in our small community and that one of the women on there used to be married to Alun Andeson (actually, at the time of this meeting she still was).

He told me not to confirm whether this was the website in question but that he would take it as the basis of his conversation as this was something he had seen and would enable him to have an anchor for his comments. (I believe he had equated the 2 already but would not say so directly in order to retain some semblance of privacy).

He knew of Alun Andeson both by reputation and by having some friends in common. A man of Andeson's skills would have probably hidden the document through a more complex and obscure system than Ian's suggested method just because it would have amused him. Alun would have known that courts would not accept screenshots as evidence so would not have really been concerned if the deletions had not worked. His wife would not know this and he would have done the deletions just to further annoy and frustrate her.

He also said if we became involved with the 'Andeson website' and hired someone to investigate they would probably turn the job down as soon as we told them who we were looking at. Alun's work was organised crime gangs and how they laundered their money. Prying in to his background would have brought the investigator to the attention of the police. He was also rumoured to be a very tough and unforgiving man. Computer people in that field would not want to annoy him.

I said that that was not how I ever thought of computer people and Ian laughed. He said that there was the same mix of personalities in computing as anywhere else and that he knew of a number of them you would not like to meet down a dark alley. One of them, apparently, was Alun Andeson who he had been told was 'hard as nails' and in his youth had been a hardened drinker and respected pub fighter. He had been lucky never to have been charged before changing his ways otherwise he would never have got his current job.

Ian assumed Ms Andeson had never asked Alun about his past and if he had told her she just assumed he was a computer 'nerd' who had made the stories up in order to look tough. Instead she had chased a man who had the possessions, status and confidence of what had always been classed as an alpha male. Alun had taken all of those away without effort. Almost as an afterthought. He was one of those people with the power to ruin your life but you never even knew he existed.

I told him that I found that frightening. Ian then said something which I can still recall pretty much verbatim.

"The really frightening thing here is not the computers. It is that Alun had paid attention to his wife and knew her and what she found important and his revenge caused her maximum pain. She, on the other hand, did not know him. Even if she knew nothing about his job she should have known his temperament and that he would not take this lying down. She thought that she could cheat on him in the worst possible way and he would just take it. How can you misjudge someone that badly after being married to them for so long? The really scary thing here is not computers. It is human nature."

After this I always listen to my wife very carefully.

One Year Later: What happened to everybody.

Sonia Andeson

Finally left town and moved to Manchester where nobody knew her. She went back to her maiden name of Sonia Matthews (though often spelt it as Sonya). She had to take low paid work as all her qualifications and experience were as Sonia Andeson and as soon as her history was revealed jobs mysteriously went to someone else. The money from the sale of the house was not as much as she expected but by being careful with it and working long hours she at least managed to get by.

The stress had caused her to look much older than she was so she found dating difficult. In her own mind she took no blame for what she had done and put all of her troubles down to Dave and Alun. Her bitterness meant that most dates ended quickly.

David (Dickhead) Holden

After losing everything he tried his best to hide. He sold off everything he owned to build up what he called his 'escape fund.'

He did not get away in time and was caught one night and given a severe beating which seemed to concentrate on kicking him in the balls. He needed surgery and one of his testicles was so badly damaged it had to be removed. Peripheral damage was sustained to blood flow in the surrounding tissue and he had difficulty getting an erection -- although doctors said the damage was not physical but psychological. The man who did the beating was caught and was the husband of one of the wives on the website. He served a short jail sentence for the assault but on release was treated as a hero by other married men and gave a report to the local paper where he said he did not regret what he had done or divorcing his wife.

One unexpected consequence of the beating was that Dave banged his head and damaged an eye socket. He could look you in the eye and sound sincere but then his left eye would drift to the side which everyone found funny. It ruined his dating chances even further.

Alun Andeson

Carried on pretty much as normal. He worked hard so that took up most of his time. He went out on a few dates and found that although the sex was infrequent it was close to what he had experienced with Sonia over the last year so that was OK with him.

He did go out and get very drunk on the first couple of weekends but got scared where it was leading him and stopped again.

He sold the house and moved somewhere a bit smaller but it was still more room than he actually needed. He would probably die alone and unmarried but that did not bother him in the slightest.In the old days he would have been called a Stoic. I just think he is cold.

Chris Robinson

Did not come across any similar cases involving computers. That made him happy.

Kenzie Butler

Did not have to type up any more sweary transcriptions. That made her happy as well.

Dave's mates

As Alun Andeson expected, the release of the website data caused a feeding frenzy amongst hackers who quickly broke into the websites of Dave's email friends. The contents were quickly shared on the internet and all the friends lost their jobs and some were successfully sued. They all got a beating at some point but nothing as bad as Dave's

All but one of them had gone with the easy option for setting up a website and they had violated the law in the host countries and were successfully prosecuted. The others turned on the careful one and said that a lot of it was his idea. It wasn't but the others thought it only fair to share blame equally. Isn't it nice to have friends!

Amongst themselves they were like Sonia and thought it was all Dave's fault.