An award-winning writer has called for law changes to crack down on internet trolling, saying she has suffered sustained abuse at the hands of Jack the Ripper fanatics.
Hallie Rubenhold said she faced relentless online abuse from so-called Ripperologists, obsessed by the man believed to have brutally murdered five women in and around Whitechapel in 1888.
“I’m going to be completely honest - it’s been horrific,” Hallie said on stage at Capital Crime 24, a three-day crime writing festival, last week.
“They are incessant, persistent - I think they are insane, some of them. It has got to me and I will be honest about that.
“What they are doing is harassment and I think a lot of the online laws need to be changed - and I’m certainly not the only person who’s been harassed,” she added.
“Something really needs to be changed, because it’s despicable.”
The event was held at the Leonardo Royal Hotel in St Paul’s, where Hallie appeared alongside Linda Calvey and Eleni Kyriacou on a panel about turning true stories into books.
Her book The Five focused on the lives of the women generally accepted as victims of the infamous East End serial killer, challenging some of what she called the “traditional narrative”.
She questioned the assumption that all of the Ripper’s victims had been sex workers and argued that he had more likely targeted homeless women as they slept in the street.
The book became a bestseller and won the £50,000 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction – but also upset a lot of Ripper enthusiasts.
One audience member last Friday, May 31, told Hallie during a Q&A that at another book event days earlier, a Ripperologist had booed at the mention of her name and her book.
“I’m just loathed by them,” the author said.
“They generally just hate me because I’ve thrown a lot into question over this traditional narrative of Jack the Ripper and they don’t like it.
“There’s a lot of ego involved. A lot of people have invested a lot of time in researching this material and they all have their pet theories.
“This is about a load of people who don’t have anything in their lives but a murderer,” she added.
“I mean, contemplate that. Their entire lives are based around having very set ideas which they have explored about the identity of a murderer. It kind of puts everything in context.
“It’s about them, and them being told they are wrong.”
Hallie told the audience she is now working on a book about the notorious Islington murder case of Dr Hawley Crippen.
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