Some of you may already be aware of a post made by a RAWK user yesterday which sickeningly likened Roy Hodgson to Hillsborough. There were two attempts to make this post, both were removed immediately by the site staff and the user was banned from the site indefinitely. Despite this screenshots of the offending post soon started appearing all over other fansites, Facebook and Twitter with accompanying opprobrium. The user involved being traced and having his home address details published along with various threats.
The user has protested his innocence and as a result we have spent a considerable amount of time looking into what happened. We are continuing to investigate but it appears that the offending post put on RAWK in very suspicious circumstances, from IP addresses not normally associated with this users account, these IP addresses have been logged. It seems probable that the user has had his personal details breached by a third party and these were then used by the same third party to make the posts on here.
The post was removed within minutes of it appearing online on RAWK. The opportunity to get a screen grab of the piece was extremely limited, and it's rapid dispersal through Twitter is both disappointing and unusual. As investigations stand the earliest posting of the screenshots are within an hour of the event taking place when they were posted on Red Cafe at 3.30pm yesterday. The RAWK moderators are taking this issue very seriously and are working with the user to assist him in his attempts to find out how his account was breached. Given the level of personal abuse and threats that this individual has received, the site will also comply with any requests from the police regarding this issue.
For the sake of the user himself and in order to try and protect all the good work done by members of the various Hillsborough campaign groups we would urge that if you see the 'Hillsborough' smear being repeated on Twitter or any other media please forward this message to the offending site or individual.
There is further discussion on this
here. We would be particularly interested in hearing from anyone who has found references to the screenshots or the posts from earlier than 3.30pm yesterday.
