Stories of a gang rape by named Premiership footballers triggered a frenzy on the Internet this week, fuelling its reputation as a hotbed for dangerous gossip, writes Mary Hannigan
It was as ugly and depressing an allegation as imaginable. A 17-year-old girl goes to a London hotel with a Premiership footballer and the pair have consensual sex. But then a group of players enter the room, three or four "gang-rape" her and subject her to another serious sexual offence, while another three or four look on. She leaves the hotel and reports the incident to police 12 hours later, after speaking with her family. The police begin their investigation.
The Sun broke the story on Monday; by that afternoon the only established fact came from a Scotland Yard spokesman: "We can confirm the Metropolitan Police Service have received an allegation of rape from a 17-year-old female. At this stage it would be inappropriate to comment further."
By Tuesday, the London Times was casting doubt on the allegations, reporting "the examination [by the police\] of the hotel room is understood to have yielded no evidence that would support the girl's claims", suggesting the case could follow a similar pattern to previous allegations against "celebrities", among them TV presenter John Leslie who had sexual assault charges against him dropped earlier this year after a campaign of vilification directed at him in sections of the English press.
By Monday afternoon, however, dozens of Premiership footballers had been named on Internet messageboards as the men at the centre of the allegations, beginning what proved to be a week of vicious rumours, fabrication and smears.
This frenzy of gossip, much of it evidently malicious, confirmed the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" has yet to be acknowledged in cyberspace. Even if the allegations prove to be well-founded and the names of those involved in the incident are among those that appeared on the Internet, many innocent players have also been accused of being gang rapists.
The lawyers who threatened to snare culprits making defamatory allegations online were fighting a losing battle - for every one offender they'd trace there would be hundreds more who would remain undetected, such is the nature of the Internet. "The largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had," as Eric Schmidt, chief executive officer of Google, once put it. And anarchic it has been all week. A defamation law-free zone.
By Monday night, Rivals.net, the company that runs websites for all 92 English league clubs, had closed down its messageboards which were by then littered with players' names, because they believed it to be "prudent to ensure our network is not used for any unsavoury comments or unsubstantiated rumours". Others shut down too, or at least deleted any messages identifying players and warned contributors not to post any more names - on one messageboard the response to this request was to simply post players' squad numbers - but most remained ungoverned.
The majority of the messageboard "posters" claimed to have dependable sources and to be reliably informed. They were "in the know", their information could be trusted. They had a mate who had a mate who knew "someone", and there was no question about it: "A.N. Other was involved in the gang rape". By the time you added up the A.N. Others you had enough players to field five football teams.
Four of those accused on several websites shared the same surname, giving the impression that one of those "dependable" sources had neglected to list christian names to the recipient of the gossip, so the blanks were filled in. Any name would do.
The rumour grew in the telling. On Thursday the London Times reported one of these players, "entirely unconnected with the incident", "had journalists camped outside his home".
The Sun had revealed that one of the players involved in the incident was an England international, so several contributors to one particular messageboard went through the current English squad and picked out who they believed was "likely" to be involved in a gang rape. The list was drawn up, within minutes several of those who read it were posting as "fact" that these were the players involved. The names soon spread, like wildfire, across other websites. The discussion was no longer about "whether" these players were involved, it was now about what length sentences they would receive and if their football careers were over.
There had been three Premiership matches in London over the weekend so the majority of the players from the six clubs involved - Arsenal, Newcastle, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Charlton and Liverpool - had their names bandied about as "probable rapists". That speculation prompted one of the clubs, Aston Villa, to publicly deny any of its players was involved in the alleged incident, a denial that puts pressure on the other five clubs to do the same.
By then, however, the fire had been fuelled further by the Daily Sport when it published the name of the club alleged to be at the centre of the investigation, a disclosure, allied to "teasers" in other newspapers, that prompted Britain's Attorney General to issue a statement urging the media not to "engage in conduct nor to publish material, including comment, that may create a substantial risk of serious prejudice to the course of justice". The Daily Sport could yet be prosecuted for contempt following a complaint by one of the players alleged to have taken part in the assault - the London Independent reported yesterday that his lawyers believe he could "become known through jigsaw identification".
Meanwhile police, and lawyers representing the players, fear players' names will be chanted in football grounds throughout England over the weekend. It has even been suggested that TV and radio companies could be sued if their microphones pick up the chants, a particular problem for Sky Sports and those that will have live coverage of matches. Broadcasters already use measures to attempt to muffle the sound of offensive chanting at games (racist chants, for example) - such measures are likely to be in heavy use over the weekend and coming weeks.
As early as Tuesday night a rival club of the one named by the Daily Sport had a home game. During it supporters chanted, in derogatory terms, the names of players whose identities had been circulated on the Internet. The dependable source of their information? Internet messageboards, most probably, where the law is as much a stranger as the truth.