‘Reign of terror’: An online troll destroys a family’s offline life

Washington Post ^ | July 21, 2015 | Justin Jouvenal

[Second Amendment First]

Sharon and Richard Moreno were awakened by a phone call from a police negotiator around 2:30 a.m. one night last May. He told them to get out of their home immediately and leave their adult son behind.

Officers with rifles greeted the couple on their front lawn in Sterling, Va., and tackled their son William on the porch. They had been drawn by a chilling post attributed to William on a popular local Web forum: “I JUST SHOT MY PARENTS NOW I WILL KILL MY SISTER.”

The Morenos say in a lawsuit that the post was a hoax, part of an unrelenting campaign of harassment by “trolls” on the forum, Fairfax Underground, that turned their lives upside down and drove William to attempt suicide.

[Science reveals what makes trolls so nasty] William Moreno, 32, poses for a portrait at the home of his parents, Sharon and Richard Moreno, in Sterling, Va. He has major depression, and at first a Web forum seemed a good fit for someone who finds it painful to socialize in the real world. (Brittany Greeson/The Washington Post)

Trolls are the bane of online forums, games and comment sections, sowing discord with inflammatory remarks and needling other users for laughs. Most are content to cause trouble on the Web, but in the Morenos’ case, the lawsuit says, the attacks made the unusual leap from cyberspace to the real world.

Malevolent trolling has raised increasing concern in recent years.

[onedoug]

ø is the ultimate troll.

[WildHighlander57]

So that’s how the troll found out their address...

Maybe they live in a state where, given the name, the address can be found.

[Albion Wilde]

I read a story like this and I have to praise you again for making a lively but sane place for interesting and responsible people.

[roadcat]

Men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater [Aristotle].

[wideawake]

This is more than ordinary trolling: it’s SWATting.

[HiTech RedNeck]

That Aristotle, he was Captain Obvious of his day

[Mastador1]

Obama has found a forum to haunt, we call it America, and he HAS been trolling us for years to our great physical, financial and psychological detriment. So you see he has been satisfying and getting to destroy all of America and good deal of other countries in the real world.