After being accused of stealing a teddy bear and some flowers from the grave of murdered soldier Lee Rigby, and fighting back in the only way I could, here's what has and hasn't happened:
My Blog
I originally posted the blog linked to above on my own website, http://www.nikkipilkington.comWithin 3 hours it had over 1000 unique views. Unfortunately within 3 hours my website and hosting company were hit with a massive DDoS attack (denial of service) and my site disappeared - coincidence? I think not...
My hosting company explained that not only was my site down, the whole server was down (this continued for the next 6 hours with hundreds of thousands of requests being sent to my site in order to 'crash' it).
Unfortunately my host was left with no choice but to ask me to leave their service.
I presume this was meant to scare me or make me stop - it didn't.
Now what?
As soon as we realised that the site wasn't coming back up anytime soon, Leigh and I formulated another plan. We posted mirror copies of the blog to Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger - try your hardest people, you can't bring them all down :)Between the 4 versions of the blog, we've had over 5000 unique views in 48 hours. The blogs have been shared across Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and beyond. They've been posted on Facebook Pages that posted the original blog accusing me of the grave robbery, and linked to from websites that covered the original story.
Thank you to all of you who have shared and tweeted my response - it is very much appreciated.
What HASN'T happened?
So far I haven't been raped, buggered, murdered or stabbed. My house and car are still intact. My children are still alive and kicking. I haven't seen a dead man's penis :)I haven't had one more negative comment on my Facebook pages or Twitter account since posting the blogs.
I haven't heard from Mr Bonehill. In fact no-one seems to have. His 'Daily Bale' website hasn't been updated, his Facebook pages and some of his aliases have disappeared. He seems to have gone to ground.
What HAS happened?
I've had hundreds of supportive messages across various social media platforms - thank you to you all, I will try to reply to everyone.I've found a new web host and my site should be back up soon :)
I've had one private message of apology from one of the people who threatened me - that's right, ONE out of the 100+ messages of hatred I received. Quick to judge, not so quick to apologise I guess. Or maybe they just can't spell 'sorry'. There may have been apologies on some of the threads I haven't yet been able to get around to reading, but I won't hold my breath too long.
The police are still investigating Mr Bonehill and his known associates, and have profile links and details for all of the people who abused me, along with copies of their comments.
My final thoughts
It may seem that I've not taken this very seriously. Trust me I have. Mr Bonehill and his cronies went out to attack me personally and business wise because of a member of my family. When they realised I wasn't reacting how I 'should', they attacked my daughter. They threatened and abused me, and cost me a lot of time and money.That said, I still find the whole thing quite amusing, especially the response since my blog. Yes, even the DDoS attack, despite what it has cost me in terms of time and downtime.
However, that's ME. They are out there still, and they'll attack other people and those people may not take the whole thing in their stride. Online bullying is a serious thing - people have killed themselves because of it. Trying to destroy someone's reputation, business or otherwise, is not big and it's not clever. One day it may be one of YOUR family members.
To the people who chose to send the vile messages - I don't expect an apology from you (although it may help you with the police), but I do ask that you THINK next time you decide to vomit all over someone's Facebook page / Twitter account / Email. Do some research, ask yourself how likely it is that something is true, and even if it is, will your illiterate threats help the situation or make you feel better? Ask yourself how you would feel if it was your mother / sister / daughter that had to go through what me and my daughter have been through in the last week?
See, I relished checking my messages and emails, because every insult added fuel to my fire. But someone else may dread even switching their computer on - it's easy to do it when you don't know the person involved, but one day it could happen to someone YOU know and are close to - not feeling so big and hard now are you?
And finally, thank you to so many people - everyone who has supported me and helped to share the blog post. But most of all thank you to my gorgeous daughter who has kept her head held high despite being attacked herself and seen the whole thing as the farce it is. I'm inordinately proud of how she has dealt with this and hope that everyone who knows her is too. And of course my fantastic partner who, once he had stopped worrying for my safety, saw the funny side too and supported me in dealing with this in my own way. I'm very lucky to be surrounded by such supportive and wonderful people.
This will be my last blog on this subject, unless Mr Bonehill decides on another course of attack, as I have real work to do :)
