A couple that sued gossip website Tattle Life have described themselves as “very grateful” for the legal victory against the ‘forum of hate and abuse’. 

The Antrim-based business owners Neil and Donna Sands were awarded £300,000 (€352,000) in damages after years of legal action.

Tattle Life described itself as a “commentary website” that allows people to post “critiques of people that choose to monetise their personal life as a business and release it into the public domain.”

It claims it has a “zero-tolerance policy to any content that is abusive”; however, that was not the experience of the Sands. 

On Lunchtime Live, Mr Sands recalled that he had never heard of the website until 2021. 

“We discovered through a friend that there had been a thread created on this gossip site,” he explained. 

“It put itself out there as a gossip site but it’s really quite a well designed and moderated forum for hate, stalking and defamation and abuse. 

“Both of our businesses had been mentioned in highly defamatory ways and that was in February 2021.

“It just got worse from there over the next couple of years.” 

Stalking

Mr Sands said the discussion of his business amounted mainly to “lots of lies”, but the couple soon realised they were being stalked as well. 

“We were in a restaurant one evening and a young lady came over to us with her boyfriend,” he said. 

“She recognised Donna and she sat down and we had a chat - she was from Drogheda where I’m from. 

“We had a bottle of drink and away they went.

"About 30 minutes later on the site, a friend said, ‘Hey, this has been said about you on there’ and it was specific to what had been discussed in dialogue with this couple. 

“At that stage, we started to understand that folks were really stalking us.” 

Legal proceedings

The couple decided to take legal action against the site and Mr Sands, who previously worked in Silicon Valley, started “digging into the website” with some friends. 

On Friday, the High Court in Belfast ruled that the suspected operator of the site, Sebastian Bond, could be named for the first time publicly. 

The High Court in Belfast. Picture by: Alamy.com.

Mr Sands described this as “a very long time coming”, adding he and his wife have been inundated with messages from other people targeted by Tattle Life posters since Friday. 

“Some of them were really quite dark and concerning where this site pushed people to the very edges of their mental health,” he said. 

“For us, it was a case of if we can do something we should.” 

Mr Sands continued that there has to be “accountability” in the online world. 

“We’ve just a normal couple trying to get on with our business positively," he said. 

“The award, we were very, very grateful for that recognition.”

Main image: A barrister holding a wig. Picture by: PA Wire/PA Images