SA teen tackles Facebook in court following rape, murder threats

A local 13-year-old girl left fearing for her life after receiving a barrage of rape and murder threats over social media, is taking Facebook on in court in a bid to lift the veil of anonymity behind which her perpetrator has been hiding.

This is after attempts to engage the social networking giant directly, and a criminal complaint laid with local police, came to nought.

Terrified the author of the threats could be one of her classmates, the girl, who cannot be named because she is a minor, refuses to return to school.

“I cannot face the prospect of knowing he might be there and I just don’t know that it is him,” she said in papers filed in the High Court in Johannesburg last month.

This is part of an urgent application aimed at forcing Facebook to release the basic subscriber information for the anonymous account from which the threats were sent.

The girl explained the graphic threats, which were included in the papers, were sent over Instagram, one of Facebook’s subsidiaries, from five different accounts in May.

She said they had left her feeling “degraded and utterly terrified”.

“I fear this anonymous perpetrator has actually been formulating plans to harm me in these or similar ways,” she said.

“I could barely eat or sleep for about five days after receiving the messages. I am still traumatised, and I am afraid to leave the house or be left on my own.”

Leading social media law expert Emma Sadleir, who together with Andrew Miller & Associates, is the instructing attorney in the case, was pushed from pillar to post when she tried to engage with Facebook directly.

In their heads of argument, the girl’s advocates, Kate Hofmeyr, Ben Winks and Carina du Toit, said the company had created “an impenetrable fortress around it which makes it almost impossible for users of Facebook or Instagram to obtain the basic subscriber information that would identify the perpetrators of crimes on these platforms”.

“Facebook Inc is the only party that possesses the basic subscriber information that the applicant needs to identify the perpetrator.

“She has pleaded with Facebook Inc for many weeks to obtain this information, but instead of assistance, she has been met with obfuscation,” they said.

Of the police investigation, the advocates said the girl had been visited by a detective only once since opening a case.

The case is expected to come before Judge Brian Spilg tomorrow.

Despite initially issuing a notice to oppose the application, Facebook has since agreed to abide by the court’s decision, but the girl’s legal team will argue for a costs order.

“Facebook Inc has played a game of cat and mouse with the applicant,” they said in their heads of argument.

“The game is odious because the applicant is not a ‘cat’ and Facebook Inc is certainly not a ‘mouse’.

It is one of the largest, richest and most powerful corporations in the world.

“The applicant, on the other hand, is a 13-year-old girl who wants to protect herself from the most horrific harm imaginable.”

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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