The horrendous abuse that’s just part of my life

DISTURBING AUDIO: They poisoned her dog and threaten her life. It’s unlikely you’ll have heard of worse online abuse and trolling than what happens to Sherele Moody.

Around nine million Australians have experienced online harassment and cyberhate — I am just one of them.

This is not a woe is me article, but a genuine attempt to ignite discussion about the abhorrent things people do online to harm others and the real-world consequences of their actions.

My colleague Ginger Gorman is a respected journalist who has not only written extensively about trolling as part of her work, but has also experienced it first-hand.

She spent the past five years investigating the issue, interviewing trolls, survivors, social media companies and experts across Australia.

Her book — Troll Hunting — will soon be hitting bookshelves across Australia.

“When I started the book, I thought I knew what I was walking into — but I had no idea of no idea of the darkness,” Ginger tells me.

“The book documents endless real-life horrors.”

To help inform the book, Ginger commissioned the Australia Institute to undertake a survey to determine how widespread cyberhate is.

The research offers a disturbing glimpse into the dark soul of Australia’s terrifying online underbelly.

The data shows one in three of us — or 8.8 million Aussies — have had our lives disrupted by someone with a keyboard and a grudge to bear.

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Journalist and anti domestic violence campaigner Sherele Moody is the subject of constant online abuse and threats, like this.

Cyberhate runs a gamut of actions but the most common are unwanted sexual messages or nude photos, threats of physical and sexual violence, threats of death, online publication of personal details and/or photos without permission (including on porn sites) and inciting others to commit violence.

Given most of my female mates have been trolled, it does not surprise me that the research shows 55 per cent of victims in Australia are women and the majority of the abusers are male.

“These guys — who are mostly young, white and seemingly marginalised — are angry and they are harming us,” Ginger says.

“While trolls aren’t all the same, many of them are dangerous and full of hate.”

Harassment and cyberhate costs the Australian economy around $3.7b, largely due to survivors needing health support for post traumatic stress disorder and the like, victims missing out on work due to stress, policing and prosecuting offenders, public education and advertising programs to reduce trolling and funding for the federal Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network (ACORN) agency.

Economics aside, trolling can have extremely devastating personal consequences.

Once you fall into the webs woven by what Ginger describes as “highly organised predator trolls” — it is hard to escape.

Their sole reason for existence is to “disrupt and disturb” their target’s lives.

Around four years ago, I started writing articles about — and campaigning against — domestic, sexual and other violence against women and children.

Since then, I have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way — mostly because my work shines a very uncomfortable light on male violence in particular.

The attacks come in waves, both via online and phone calls.

It is a rare day indeed that I do not get at least one abusive message.

There are weeks when the trolling is minor and barely worth a second thought.

But these lulls are too-soon broken by electronic witch hunts that can run for days at a time.

From morning to night, strange men — and yes, 95 per cent of my haters are men — tell me in no certain terms that I am a “dog c….”, a “man-hater”, a “misandrist” and a “feminazi”.

They say I look like a man, that I am too ugly to rape or conversely that I need to be raped, that I deserve to be bashed with bricks, nine-irons or fists, that I should be killed and if I am not killed, I should end my own life.

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These attacks are highly organised, as untouchable online cyberhate generals order their massive armies of loyal followers to attack.

The troll leaders hide behind fake profiles, but they run very public — and seemingly innocuous — social media pages and groups, with 10s, if not hundreds of, thousands of followers.

Some are based in Australia and others are overseas.

They publish material on their social media pages that discredit my journalism and activism, clearly aiming to fuel hatred among their followers.

They urge their soldiers to report every post and comment I make to trigger Facebook — my preferred social media platform — into banning me permanently.

Last year, I copped six bans back-to-back, as Facebook unwittingly playing into their hands by determining that my very balanced discussion of male violence was hate speech and offensive.

Thankfully, I was able to work with Facebook to stop this happening, the bans were lifted and special flags were placed on my accounts.

Facebook even went so far to permanently remove one of the worst offenders.

Often the trolling attacks come within hours of one of my articles being published or after I have done something that they do not agree with.

At first, the abuse dribbles in — a message or two with a common theme pops into my inbox and I begin to realise something is up.

The momentum builds quickly and suddenly the torrent is so large that it is simply impossible to keep up with.

When I am drowning, I turn my pages off to silence them, but this means they flood my emails and my message bank.

Sherele Moody's beloved Great Dean Reuben was poisoned by what she believes was man who had stalked her for four years, abusing her for her anti-domestic violence campaigning.

Eventually, the wind leaves their sails and the attacks fade as the trolls take up the scent of another target.

One of the worst and longest bouts of trolling hit me last year after I released the Australian Femicide and Child Death Map — a project three years in the making and one that documents murdered women and children.

The trolls were angry that the Map did not include adult male victims and they believed it unfairly highlighted male violence despite it also containing victims of female violence.

I have had two trolling attacks in the past two weeks — one came as a result of an issue for which I am seeking legal advice and the other was a direct response to the article I penned regarding the rape and murder of Aya Massawre in Melbourne.

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A Facebook user said to me: “Go kill yourself before I do”.

He followed this a short time later with: “When she leaves her house there’s no guarantee she’ll come back home. I’m glad to see she lives in my city. I guess I have to be patient till I get to jump on her head and beat the f… out of her. Patience will avail. I’ll get my chance.”

The other threat came via phone.

“Back off you f…ing scumbag dog c… or you’ll be the one copping the f…ing brick to the head,” a man said on my voicemail

The police officer investigating these threats agrees that these blokes mean business, so until they are caught, I will be on high alert.

The response from police — and the broader community — can be mixed, because — as Ginger says — most people do not understand how horrific trolling can be.

“One of the things people say to predator trolling targets is that they are ‘snowflakes’ and to ‘pull their big girl panties up’ — as if predator trolling is minor and can be stopped if you block and delete,” Ginger tells me.

“This kind of online harassment is real life. It doesn’t happen in fairyland. Victims frequently endure the destruction of their lives — they lose jobs, careers and frequently have huge mental and physical health impacts.”

In most cases online hate remains online but when trolls move into the real world their actions can be deadly.

One day in late 2017, I came home from work to find my Great Dane Reuben drooling saliva laced with blood and a green substance.

His breath smelt like a rotting carcass, he was traumatised and in great pain.

It took just a few minutes for the vet to confirm that he had ingested a corrosive substance that was so caustic it was melting the flesh off his mouth, tongue, throat, windpipe and stomach.

The vet sedated him and stripping away the dead rotting flesh and washing clear the chemical.

For two weeks, it was touch and go but thankfully Reuben’s big heart pulled him through and — apart from extensive scarring — is back to his normal big goofy self.

The person who harmed Reuben has not been caught, but I firmly believe it was a man who has stalked me relentlessly online for the past four years.

In September, my 35-year-old horse Frank disappeared from his paddock.

A day later, a man left a message on my voicemail: Your nag’s gone to glue factory, ya c…. Ya won’t see him again”.

Frank’s body was found five days after he went missing. It appeared his neck had been broken.

Frank’s death still cuts me to the bone — especially as I believe he paid a terrible price because of my activism.

“The research suggests these trolls are sadist and take pleasure in harming others,” Ginger says.

Over the years I have adjusted my life, taking precautions to stay safe, but lately the attacks have been so abhorrent and so close to home that I am now living in fear.

Sherele Moody's horse Frank, who went missing and was found dead after a man left a message saying she wouldn’t see him again.

I have a security tracker on my phone, cameras are to be installed and police have stressed the importance of constantly changing my routine — this includes buying groceries at different supermarkets, getting on or off the train at different stations and driving different routes when going to my normal haunts.

I rarely post photos of my partner or tag her on social media, lest she become a target as well.

I have stopped posting photos of my pets for fear another one will be killed.

My work’s security team now holds a list of 20 people who have continually cyberstalked, abused, harassed or threatened me.

These are the people whose obsession is so bad that they have the potential to do me the most harm.

They shadow me on social media using their own — and fake — profiles and they even leave passive aggressive opinions in the comment sections of the digital news sites I write for and on the social media pages owned by News Corp.

They publish articles and videos online demeaning my professionalism as a journalist and as an anti-violence campaigner.

They drop comments laced with anger and hate about me on the socials and in the messaging apps of my friends.

They share my profile with other trolling groups, encouraging en-mass invasions of my private space.

They publish any personal information they can find, they turn photos of me into homophobic and misogynist memes, they try to hack my social media accounts and emails, they set up fake social media pages that are duplicates of my own and they even encourage others to bombard my employer with emails claiming I am a hack and that I am unethical.

The list of their nefarious activities grows daily and there is very little that I can do about it despite discussions with police and ACORN.

I speak about their behaviour with my friends — we vent a little, drop a few f-bombs, laugh nervously and move on to less disturbing topics.

The women in my circle are outspoken journalists, authors, lawyers, domestic violence professionals, academics, media commentators, performers, politicians and activists.

We all have two things in common: The first is that we use our professions, our skills and our passion to highlight gender inequality, toxic masculinity, rape culture and misogyny.

The other common thread is that we all have obsessed online stalkers and have been trolled relentlessly.

“Until you experience predator trolling yourself, it’s hard to describe the cold terror,” Ginger says to me.

“When our family was targeted by an orchestrated international online hate campaign in 2013, we got a death threat late at night.

“I was afraid for the safety of my kids and wondered if, as a result of my journalism I’d put my family at risk.”

My friends and I have built up a tolerance to cyberhate, often lamenting at how “normal” this behaviour has become for us despite it being a quite scary and intimidating.

When my phone buzzes, a small part of me shrinks back with fear. I wake each day wondering if something I say or do will set them off.

Often I am urged to pull back, to hide behind a fake profile, to remove my byline from my journalism, to fall silent.

These people are well-meaning and I understand their concern and their points of view.

But silencing women is the endgame for the trolls and this is something that I simply cannot let happen.

I have long since accepted that losing my sense of security is the price I pay for being a woman with a voice.

News Corp journalist Sherele Moody is the recipient of the 2018 B&T Women in Media Social Change Maker Award and has multiple Clarion and Walkley Our Watch journalism excellence awards for her work highlighting violence against women and children. She is also the founder of The RED HEART Campaign and the creator of the Femicide Australia Map.