Mother begins legal action against 'Skippy' over Facebook post

THE mother of the seven-year-old girl whose photograph was posted by UNC activist and suspended radio talk-show host Barrington “Skippy” Thomas last month, has initiated legal action for defamation. She is seeking a public apology and retraction and compensation for damage done to her and her daughter’s reputation.

Attorneys for Krystal George and her daughter have given Thomas until March 24 to respond to their pre-action protocol letter.

In the deleted Facebook post, which was screenshotted and shared on social media, Thomas posted a photograph of a child on a music truck with the PM standing in the road behind her, smiling for the camera. In the post, Thomas said he found the picture “uncomfortable.” The post was made on February 25 – Carnival Tuesday.

Thomas, a host on Power102.1FM, was swiftly suspended by the radio station.

Attorney Jennifer Farah-Tull, of the law firm Hove and Associates, wrote to Thomas on Tuesday, telling him her client was holding him responsible for reposting the photograph of her daughter on Facebook without her consent and bringing their good names into disrepute by posting defamatory comments on his profile.

The letter said when George asked Thomas to remove the photo, since he did not have her authorisation to post it, he told her, “ Keep her home not in public flirting for adult men.”

“This statement highlights our clients in a negative light by the use of a vacuous, scandalous, misleading and an unfounded allegation,” Farah-Tull said.

The attorney told Thomas his statements were understood to mean that George was an irresponsible parent; an unfit mother, was careless when it came to the safety and care of her child; was immoral; was a perpetrator of child abuse and reckless endangerment of her child; and wilfully exposed her daughter to danger with adult men.

She also said that Thomas’ statements meant that the child seduced men, in particular, the prime minister; was flirtatious and was flirting with the prime minister; was immoral; sexually precocious; and was on the steelband float for the purpose of flirting with adult men.

Farah-Tull said Facebook, being the most popular and leading social media site, enjoyed a substantial online viewership in TT and the world, with a wide audience. She said Thomas’s post became known to a substantial but unquantifiable number of unidentifiable readers.

She also said Thomas’s post elicited defamatory statements from many others. She also held him responsible for the republication of the post in his statements he gave to the Trinidad Express newspapers soon after.

The attorney told him he ought to have anticipated there was a significant risk that what he said would be repeated, since he was a well-known public figure as a political activist and radio talk-show host.

She said the post went viral, considering the prime minister was made the subject of ridicule.

In the letter, George vehemently denied any and all of the allegations and innuendo of the behaviour alleged in Thomas’s post. Farah-Tull said the pre-school owner suffered shame, distress, anxiety, and embarrassment because of Thomas’ “disparaging”, “defamatory,” and “highly malicious” statements. which were made with the ulterior motive of furthering his political vendetta against the prime minister.

Not only did the statements put her career into disrepute and jeopardy, her lawyer argued, but her and her daughter’s privacy were breached by the posting of the child’s photograph.