I'm appealing!

Some of you will remember that back in November, I was convicted of criminal damage for throwing a phone. The phone belonged to a man who had repeatedly shoved it in my face outside the Battle of Ideas, where I’d just been a speaker. I was acquitted of harassment (the judge found his evidence, on its own, wasn’t reliable enough to convict). But she got me on the phone.

Before I get to the appeal: the judgment. It makes for interesting reading.

The Complainant is a trans activist who had spent the day of the Battle of Ideas making a nuisance of himself. During a panel discussion about violence against women, while a woman was actually speaking about violence against women, he stood up and began filming the audience in an effort to disrupt the event and intimidate those attending. The disruption was significant enough that the chair had to quietly tell the speaker to “just keep going.” Kate Harris, a trustee of the LGB Alliance, tried to block his camera with a conference programme. It was, she told the court, “all that she could do.”

He was eventually escorted out. But he didn’t leave. He waited outside.

None of this surprised me. I knew already how he attends gender-critical events (sometimes wearing suffragette colours to blend in, sometimes shouting abuse from nearby) and he tries to provoke people. He follows them, gets in their faces. When they react, he calls the police. The judge accepted that he had attended at least one event “purporting to be aligned” with the gender-critical movement while concealing his actual views. Through these means and others, he often tracks down the phone numbers or addresses of his victims and uses the information to embark on campaigns of vicious harassment. His own evidence was that he wanted to “supply information to internet bloggers”.

The judgment is full of extraordinary details about this man. He claimed to have a “facility” that allowed him to find people’s home addresses, before it was “patched.” When he reported me to the police, he was able to provide my full name, date of birth, home address, and mobile number. He wouldn’t tell the police how he’d obtained this information. There’s a recording of him telling Fred/Freda Wallace: “We know who you are and we are cataloguing everything that you do. So don’t worry your pretty little head. You will pay.” When asked what he meant, he said it was “a joke.” He couldn’t explain the joke. And when someone posted that soup had been thrown on Posie Parker and another user replied “Thank God it wasn’t acid,” he responded: “Really wish it was though.” When asked about this in court, he rolled his eyes.

The judge noted that the Complainant used the phrase “alarmed and distressed” repeatedly (at least eight times) without ever elaborating on what that actually meant. When it was pointed out that these are the exact words used in the Protection from Harassment Act, he said it was “just coincidence.” The judge didn’t believe him. She found that he was not, in fact, as alarmed and distressed as he claimed. His behaviour that day rather gave the game away: after supposedly being terrified by my posts about him, he turned up at an event where I was speaking, and when he saw me, he approached me. More than once. While filming. In one video, the judge noted, he “looks visibly happy and not distressed.”

The harassment charge was thrown out. The judge found that while my posts were “deeply unpleasant” (I called him a sociopath, a groomer and a domestic terrorist) they did not cross the line into criminal harassment. Having sat through the trial and heard what this person has said and done, I stand by every word. The context here is important: I was trying to warn other gender-critical people about someone who was infiltrating their events. Meanwhile, he was wishing acid attacks on women and telling people “you will pay.” If my words are “deeply unpleasant” it’s because I’m fighting a deeply unpleasant enemy.

In my trial, under the heat and pressure of cross examination, I did not express myself as well as I wanted to and struggled to get across quite how awful Brookes’ behaviour was to me. He had used his phone all day to video women and then me. He was using his phone as a tool of harassment. When I tried to move away, he followed. When I turned, he turned. He would not have stopped unless I took action. That’s probably all I can say until the appeal.

So for more drama, you’ll have to wait for the sequel to what many are already calling ‘The Trial of the Century’! The appeal will be a complete rehearing of the evidence, this time in the Crown Court. I’m told my barrister Sarah Vine will have the opportunity to properly examine just how reliable this particular witness really is. I’m looking forward to it in a way that probably isn’t healthy.

I want to thank everyone who contributed to my legal fund and made all this possible.

More news as it happens. I made it back to Arizona on a sort of ‘Con Air’ arrangement. Don’t ask too many questions.