An internet ‘troll’ who posted vile abuse on Facebook memorial sites dedicated to dead children was jailed yesterday.Mr. Duffy is described as an unemployed isolate who suffers from Asberger's syndrome and lives a miserable existence, drinking himself into a solitary stupor each day at home.
Sean Duffy caused ‘untold distress’ by mocking a 15-year-old schoolgirl who committed suicide, leaving obscene messages and videos on a condolence page set up by her family.
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In one of the first cases of its kind, the autistic loner was sentenced to 18 weeks behind bars and banned from using social networking sites for five years.
He had admitted he was hooked on the sick craze of ‘trolling’ – where internet users deliberately leave abusive and bullying comments on networking sites.
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He targeted Natasha MacBryde, who threw herself under a train close to her home in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, on Valentine’s Day this year.
The next day, Duffy trashed her Facebook memorial page, branding the public schoolgirl a ‘spoiled little ****’.
He attached to her tribute site another Facebook page entitled Tasha MacTank Engine featuring a video in which the face of the Royal Grammar School Worcester pupil was put on a train with the theme to Thomas the Tank Engine playing in the background.
Prosecuting, Joanne Belsey said Natasha’s father Andrew felt physically sick by the ‘cowardly and nasty’ abuse which ‘added to the horror of dealing with the death of their beautiful daughter’.
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Duffy also targeted a site for 16-year-old Hayley Bates, of Biddulph, Staffordshire, who died in a car crash on the M6 last September, while in another case he created a page called ‘Jordan Cooper rest in pieces’ for a 14-year-old who was stabbed to death in Newcastle upon Tyne, in February.
The loner, who lives on benefits in Reading, was caught only when Miss MacBryde’s family alerted police, who were able to trace the false email accounts he used.
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| Photo: SWNS.com; Sean Duffy |
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