Karting Australia CEO Kelvin O’Reilly slams ‘keyboard cowards’ after defamation case
KEYBOARD “cowards” should pack up and go home, according to the Karting Australia boss who was subjected to three years of vicious online taunts.
Crime and Court
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KEYBOARD “cowards” should pack up and go home, according to the Karting Australia boss who was subjected to three years of vicious online taunts.
Karting Australia CEO Kelvin O’Reilly yesterday said he was feeling “relieved” and “vindicated” after his tormentor, Southport man Peter Gerard Edgar, was found guilty of using a carriage service to menace and harass him.
The posts were so vicious Mr O’Reilly was left needing treatment for mental health problems.
The constant attacks left him so drained, Mr O’Reilly pushed for both criminal charges and a civil defamation case.
“It was about keyboard cowards who sit in a dark room and think they can say anything,” he said.
“I finally have vindication and justice for what was done.
“Keyboard cowards need to pack up and go home.”
Edgar, 56, spent three years making posts on his Federation of Australian Racing Karters Union Facebook page, targeting Mr O’Reilly.
In the posts Edgar, who is unemployed, threatened a lynching and made accusations of incompetence, corruption and sexual harassment.
Edgar also made posts about motor racing legend Mick Doohan, who is also chairman of Karting Australia, the peak body for go-kart racing.
Southport Magistrate Gary Finger yesterday found the posts made about Mr O’Reilly were offensive, menacing and harassing.
But he said posts made about Mr Doohan did not legally constitute menacing or harassing behaviour.
In sentencing Edgar yesterday, Mr Finger described the posts as “derogatory” and “scurrilous”.
“You are in my view a vindictive menace, hellbent on destroying the personal and professional integrity of these two men and you don’t care what the effect on these people will be,” Mr Finger said.
He said Edgard had a “sense of fantasy” in what he wrote in the posts and thought he “could do no wrong” despite his information coming from unconfirmed sources.
“It’s about time you woke up to yourself and got yourself a dose of reality,” Mr Finger said.
Edgar was sentenced in the Southport Magistrates Court to six months jail but released with a $2000 good behaviour bond, which will be in place for three years.
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During the sentencing Edgar stubbornly maintained he had done nothing wrong and he was just speaking the “truth”.
He was asked what he thought his sentence should be.
“None. That’s what I believe,” he said.
Throughout the three-day trial Edgar, who represented himself, remained belligerent, maintaining he was only speaking the truth.
When pressed for evidence to back his claims, Edgar struggled to produce any.
During the trial Edgar said: “I am reporting on their actions, I think their actions are terrible.
“Everything I have said is true, that’s what they did.”
The decision came after Edgar was last week ordered by the Supreme Court of Queensland to pay $250,000 in damages for defaming Mr O’Reilly in the same posts.
Justice Thomas Bradley said in his judgment Edgar had drawn conclusions that “no reasonable person could honestly make or draw”.
“It was difficult to discern the small nodules of fact amid the vast web of fantasy spun by Mr Edgar,” he said.
“It is clear that he is uninterested in checking the truth or falsity of the matters he posted on his Facebook page. He presented as an enthusiastic retailer of distant, third- or fourth-hand gossip.”
Prior to Edgar’s Facebook page starting, Mr O’Reilly and Mr Doohan had never met Edgar, who claimed to have connections to the go-karting sport from the early 1990s.
His Facebook group appeared online in 2015 and he continually started posting about them.
In 2016, Edgar accused Mr Doohan of assaulting him but charges were dropped.
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