Internet 'trolls' bill to go through Parliament as Georgia Varley Facebook tribute abuse continues

Jan 4 2012 by Laura Cox, Birkenhead News

A NEW Bill will be brought before Parliament in 2012 after a Facebook page dedicated to train tragedy Wirral girl Georgia Varley was attacked by internet “trolls”.

Tribute sites to the Birkenhead sixth form student, 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 the “trolls” three months after she died.

Administrators were forced to disable wall posts after a number of Facebook users began posting 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 and so the abuse has continued.

A Facebook spokesman 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 after being appalled at the obscene messages on Georgia’s page.

In early December Mr Rotheram 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 it down quickly and then looking at the police and prosecution side of things.

“It won’t happen quickly but we are hoping to at least bring a bill into Parliament early this year and take it from there.”

The grotesque posts on Georgia’s site were being led by Eric Konflikt Warren, a 20-year-old from Maine in the USA. Most recently somebody named Kari Ann Jackson, also listed as being from America, wrote an inappropriate rhyme about a train.