The former footballer Joey Barton has been sentenced to six months in custody, suspended for 18 months, over a series of offensive social media posts between January and March 2024.
Barton, 43, was found guilty last month at Liverpool Crown Court of six counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with intent to cause distress or anxiety for posts he made targeting the football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, and the broadcaster Jeremy Vine.
Sentencing Barton on Monday, Judge Andrew Menary KC told the former England international “robust debate, satire, mockery and even crude language may fall within permissible free speech. But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection.”
Menary, who described Barton as “not a man of previous good character”, told him his behaviour amounted “to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful”.
The posts began after an FA Cup tie between Everton and Crystal Palace on 17 January 2024, with Barton describing Ward and Aluko as the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary” for their work during the broadcast of the game. He would go on to say that Aluko was “there to tick boxes”.
When Vine interjected, Barton made a series of posts that implied that the broadcaster was a paedophile, calling him a “bike nonce”, asking if he had “been on Epstein Island” and posting a photo of Vine with the caption: “If you see this fella by a primary school call 999.”
During the trial, the court heard that Barton’s messages directed at Vine caused the 60-year-old to “feel physically unsafe”, with Vine telling the jury: “I took some advice about my security, I varied my movements. I do believe these messages put me in danger, in physical danger.”
In her victim impact statement read during the sentencing, Ward said she was “deeply upset with the malicious comparison to serial killers and feel humiliated given that millions of people will have seen this comparison” and claimed that the “incessant bullying nearly destroyed” her.
In his impact statement, Vine, to whom Barton is already paying £110,000 in costs related to the posts, said he found them “profoundly traumatising” and described Barton as “a small man who feeds off the pain of others”.
As part of his suspended sentence, Barton must complete 200 hours of unpaid community work and pay prosecution costs of £23,419, which he has 28 days to pay. There will also be two-year restraining orders relating to each of his victims that prohibits publishing any reference to them on any social media platform or broadcast medium.
Representing Barton, Simon Csoka KC said that the former Manchester City midfielder had learned “the damage words can do” and showed remorse during the trial. Leaving court, Barton told reporters: “If I could turn back the clock I would. I never meant to hurt anyone. It was a joke that got out of hand.”
