Man to sue over sex-assault allegations on Twitter

A man who was named in a Twitter post as being a sexual predator has filed two police reports about it and hired an attorney.

The man reported to the Freeport Police Station on June 3, the day his name was highlighted in a post as being a sexual assault perpetrator. The following day he made a report to the police Cyber Crime Unit.

On June 6 his attorney, Richard Jagasar, filed a Freedom of Information request asking the police to detail the status of the investigation after his client’s police reports.

Jagasar also requested the names, addresses and e-mail addresses of the owners/operators of the Twitter accounts, namely @ExposedTrini and @TrinbagoExposed.

The request also asked for the police to detail the process as to how the ongoing investigation will be carried out, steps involved and an estimate of how long it will take to complete the investigations.

The requests are all part of the plan to take legal action against the account holders.

Newsday searched for both Twitter accounts on Wednesday afternoon, but only @TrinbagoExposed was still active, although its last tweets were on June 3. The account, which was created in June, has 4,507 followers.

The post including the man's name appeared at 11.27 am on June 3 and had been retweeted 44 times, with 134 likes and eight comments. Each comment warned that the contents of the post could be deemed libellous.

The day after the post was made, Police Commissioner Gary Griffith, during a media briefing, described the sexual assault claims on Twitter as "very unfortunate" and irresponsible.

Griffith made the comment during the announcement of the Sexual Offences Unit.

He cautioned against blasting such allegations on social media and advised that with the formation of the new unit, citizens can bring the information to the police to launch an investigation.

He said then about the posts: “We will verify whether it is rumshop talk or whether it is enough that (we can) conduct an investigation to target such a perpetrator and bring him to justice.

"But you can't have anybody just making an accusation and you on social media can just plaster the person's names. That is totally irresponsible. It serves no purpose. It does not help. And all that will do now is cause a whole set of civil cases that I have no intention to get involved in."