Struthers Memorial Church and the right to speak | ||||
|
|
|
|
|
The question of how we all stand legally in raising public concerns about Struthers Memorial Church is very interesting and important. We should try to reassure people who might be nervous about posting that they have:
Nothing in this article claims to be legal advice and nothing in this article claims to set out the absolute position in Scots law. This represents our opinion based on our best understanding of the relevant issues. We recommend reading all the available online guidance to avoiding defamation and most importantly that posters on the websites try to ensure that what is shared is truthful and provable; or clearly shared as an opinion and not a fact.
We looked into this a lot before we hit the go button on Latigo214 in September 2010 and have more confidence now that we can mount a successful defence of every statement we have placed online.
We believe the position under Scots defamation law is this - | ||||
|
|
|
|
|
The Right to hold opinions | ||||
|
Everyone has a right to free speech and to debate and hold opinions on churches,
charities, public bodies, businesses and private individuals. SMC might not be used
to that but it is not a crime for us to say in public we hold different opinions
to them. Any more than it is for them to criticise and devalue the work of other
churches and Christian leaders -
Even in the articles on this website we have records of Struthers sermons publicly verbally criticising people in the abomination sermon, the question of questions and the humiliation sermon. They then placed these criticisms online for all to hear. If we can be accused of libel (defamation in writing) for what we have written then they can be accused of slander (verbal defamation) for what they have said. Perhaps it was this very fear that led them to remove the online sermons in embarrassment. | |||
| ||||
When someone objects to something said | ||||
|
Anyone can raise an accusation that any published information is defamatory (either libellous, damaging to their reputation or both). This is not a criminal issue but comes under civil law.
Long before this would ever get to court the person raising an accusation would be expected to have contacted the source and to ask for the removal or withdrawal of the defamatory statement. In the 16 months since the Latigo214 website began no one from Struthers has contacted us asking for anything defamatory to be removed; or challenging any fact on the website. We suspect the same is true about the comments on RickRoss as nothing has been removed.
If someone accused of libel removes the offending statement as requested then the matter is usually over. Hence long before any matter would get near the courts there would be an opportunity for the person who had placed a statement online to review and remove (or rescind) a disputed, allegedly defamatory, statement.
Clearly an important factor here is timeliness. If any normal person or organisation had something falsely written about them online then they would likely ask for it to be removed as soon as they became aware it was there. It would be slightly bizarre to argue that something was damaging yet they did nothing about it for a long time. Given the content of the 12 March 2011 sermon the SMC executive are well aware of the websites and their content – yet nothing has been done. This is either because they have an astonishing belief in the importance of their opinions and experiences and the irrelevance of everyone else's; or because there is no damaging fact or opinion that cannot be proven to the satisfaction of the civil courts. And it is important to note that there are now many more witnesses online than were publicly sharing in March last year. As of the date of the production of this article the count of those critical on the RickRoss discussion is 34 posters and some mention others who also feel their time in Struthers was damaging. A number of these people have made it clear to us they would be fully prepared to repeat what they have said online in court if that ever became necessary
A straightforward challenge remains. If anyone can print out a copy of the website
articles and highlight those things they believe are both libellous and untrue then
we will look at that claim very seriously. We have always said we will be willing
to consider changing the website on the basis of new facts emerging. However if,
as has happened so far, we receive no such feedback we will take that as a confirmation
that the articles – which you will remember are based on the statements and public
documents issued by Struthers Memorial Church -
It is worth a pause at this point. A year on and regardless of what we hear about
rumours of lawyers supposedly being asked to build a case against this or any other
website critical of Struthers -
“why not all the others?”
The only possible assumption would be that the SMC leadership were accepting the truth of all the unchallenged statements. That may be why they have to pretend to their members it is all untrue and they cannot begin to challenge any of it.
Even if some things could be disputed, it would be very hard for the Struthers executive to try and pick and choose between such a vast array of testimonies, experiences and allegations. As we said before they have no legal right to demand that any of us change our opinions. So all they could challenge would be any incorrect facts. It has always been our position that if they believe there are any incorrect facts on any websites they should challenge them and we, or they, can publish the correct ones.
We believe there are none they could ask to be changed. We are confident within reasonable
limits that we can provide sources for all statements on this site, and we believe
we can robustly defend these as true.-
1 not least because so many of the facts on this site come from material published by Struthers itself.
2 many of the articles on this site are not built around polemic but built around questions. Our speculations on what the answers might be are presented as speculations which will inevitably disappear once the questions are clearly answered. The Struthers leadership may like it if it was illegal to ask questions; but as things stand in Scotland in 2012 it is not.
| |||
If this should ever get to a court | ||||
|
Clearly the first hurdle with this is SMC dealing with the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5.25 “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
The instruction is if you are dealing with Christians is talk and try to agree because if you drag someone to court you could loose everything. Implicit in this teaching is the warning – self righteousness is not enough. You need to understand what the other people are saying and what is really going on. That is an instruction to listen and prayerfully consider the other persons view and be open to change.
| |||
Defences 1 | ||||
|
If it ever gets to court then there are valid defences for writing something claimed to be defamatory.
The best defence is -
If so, no matter how damaging, we have a right to publish it. The damage is only
relevant if it is caused by a lie. If we can provide good grounds for believing a
statement was true -
If we ever are required to prove to the satisfaction of a court statements on this site to be true, we are confident we can do so. The test in a civil court is “balance of judgement”, but we genuinely and honestly do not believe we would have any trouble proving any assertion on this site “beyond reasonable doubt”. This test “beyond reasonable doubt” is the test in criminal cases, and is a much more robust test. While we do not need to go that far, we are confident that we could comfortably meet this level of evidence.
And can we be very clear. Although we do not expect any of this to end up in court
we test ourselves and what is on this site on that basis. If we became aware of any
statement of fact we could not prove in court we would remove it. We are not interested
in publishing anything untrue. As we have clearly said from the start -
| |||
Note about the RickRoss forum | ||||
|
Also -
If that makes it look like the Struthers executive are not in a position to use legal
means to make this online criticism, exposure of their actions and teachings, and
testimony to problems caused by SMC go away -
If someone deliberately lies in a Rick Ross post -
| |||
Defences 2 | ||||
|
The second defence it that the defamatory statement was clearly an opinion and not
claiming to be a fact. So "Struthers damages marriages" is harder to prove true than
if someone says "In my experience being in Struthers made my married life more difficult."
Of course when there is concrete evidence such as a sermon recording, a New Dawn
book, the articles from the old church magazine -
| |||
More comfort for those nervous about posting their views and experiences | ||||
|
There are 4 more bits of comfort for those posting online at the moment.
1 If someone is ultimately found guilty of defamation then any subsequent award
of damages relates to what damage the complainant can prove has been incurred. Under
English Law in the most notable case in 2006 an MP was awarded 10 thousand pounds
for being called a "Nazi and serial adulterer" by one person in a chat-
2 We cannot find one similar case under Scots Law of internet defamation in circumstances like Latigo214 or RickRoss. So if there are legal challenges to what we have published we will be setting legal precedent and likely to have the whole freedom of speech world behind us.
3 Linked to 2 -
4 Most comforting of all -
| |||
Conclusion | ||||
|
When a lawyer hands the SMC executive the printout of Latigo214 or the Rick Ross forum postings and says "highlight the passages which are not true" they will have colossal difficulty doing that. They have no power to change our opinions and they know certain things are quotes from themselves and reasonably interpreted. They would be required to admit their position (firstly to their lawyers and then to the courts and the public) in a very realistic way and admit there was much now online which was not able to be denied in court.
At the same time they will have difficultly admitting this to the congregation. So we have heard from a few sources that a lawyer who happens to be a member of SMC has been asked by the leaders to keep an eye on the online postings “with a view to building a case". The only alternative would be saying to the congregation we are going to let it go and ignore it. The members would reasonably ask "why"? If what is being said is not true surely the leadership should challenge it and seek to correct it. We at Latigo214 have consistently asked for the SMC leadership to do this and, 16 months on, they have not yet asked for anything to be corrected.
We therefore think they are merely posing, and we can understand why they have to. A legal challenge related to this would be unprecedented and the resultant publicity far more damaging to them than anything that has happened so far. Certainly if someone says something foolish and over the top they can challenge it but that doesn't affect the rest of us; or oblige us to remove provable factual comments we have made or modify our opinions simply because they find the truth uncomfortable.
| |||
References | ||||
|
There are several good guides to online blogging and avoiding online defamation.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A1183394
http://www.website- under the defamation section
http://www.scottishlaw.org.uk/journal/oct2000/def.pdf very detailed and very good -
http://www.out-
http://www.bmartin.cc/dissent/documents/defamation.html an Australian document but very good on the importance of free speech and the ways to avoid the accusation in the first place while still speaking out about matters of concern
| |||
|
|
|
|
|