Parliamentary bill to stop internet ‘trolls’ inspired by Wirral train tragedy girl Georgia Varley

Jan 3 2012 by Laura Cox, Liverpool Echo

Georgia Varley

A NEW bill will be brought before Parliament this year after a Facebook page dedicated to train tragedy girl Georgia Varley was attacked by internet “trolls”.

Tribute sites to Georgia Varley, set up in her memory after she was killed by a train at Liverpool’s James Street railway station, have continued to be plagued by abuse three months after she died.

Administrators were forced to disable postings after a number of Facebook users began leaving obscene messages and photographs on the dedication page to Georgia, known as Gee.

But there is currently no way to prevent people from commenting on posts so the abuse has continued.

A Facebook spokesperson said comments could not be disabled in the interests of maintaining pages as “public forums based on two-way conversation”.

But Walton MP Steve Rotheram is now making progress in the fight against “trolling”.

He launched a Commons debate in November last year after being appalled at the obscene messages on Georgia’s page.

In early December he held talks with the attorney general at the home office, the directors of Facebook and the Crown Prosecution Service.

He said: “We are really pushing at this issue from both ends.

“We are looking first of all at stopping the trolling and then at what sanctions electronic media can take against people who commit these awful acts, how we can get messages taken down quickly and then looking at the police and prosecution side.

“It will not happen quickly but we are hoping to at least bring a bill into Parliament and take it from there.”

Grotesque posts on Georgia’s site were being led by a user named Eric Konflikt Warren, a 20-year-old from Maine in the USA.