Letter: Story was part of hate campaign

The vitriol spawned out of this alleged incidence is vile, unreasonable and totally against all decent behaviour. As a practitioner in the field of learning difficulties, both in social services and as a teacher for the LEA, I can comment honestly and reliably about the conduct of Denise Lelliot in regard to people, especially young people who have a disability.

Denise has a first class reputation working as a youth theatre organiser in our area, providing outstanding community service to young people from all walks of life regardless. These accusations made against her are pure vitriol and nothing else and have, I’m sure, no basis in fact — the method of her accuser’s response, social media scandalising and vigilante actions, surely point to an unreasonable attitude from her accusers, not one that would be considered responsible. Clearly they have no regard for someone’s privacy and safety or they wouldn’t have done this vile act.

Also, as a counsellor for our area, surely it would be very imprudent for Denise to have acted as she has been accused? And wouldn’t it be very biased to base a press story on one person’s accusations that have been, quite clearly to any responsible person, dangerous and irresponsible.

Denise Lelliot is a fine character in our community who serves it well, especially young people from all backgrounds, creeds or ability. This is what most people would call a “hate campaign” generated by one irresponsible parent. If the person had issue then surely the appropriate response would have been different to the actions that have been taken. As local elections are approaching this kind of unbalanced attack could be very damaging — however it could become worse and if slander becomes defamation of character or more then legal action would ensue I’m sure — and a person has rights to be protected from this kind of exposure, danger, aggressive and biased approach.

I do not use social media because of how commonly this kind of thing happens, and I can understand why some people would not want to be associated with it, however feel free to comment on my letter if you decide to publish this matter, but I would say that as a responsible newspaper with a reputation for unbiased and measured reporting in our community would you want to be associated with supporting a hate campaign that has included threats of violence to counsellor Lelliot?

Paul Perrozzi