My Cyberstalker, Mark Allan (Part 1)
I am being cyberstalked. This involves a very angry and nasty man living in Knysna. This is a man many of you will know.
I have held back from reporting this for over 2 years. Against the advice of my lawyers, who believe we will win the case, I’m breaking the silence because of what my cyberstalker posted this week. And there’s been another delay in legal proceedings which means that we’ll likely only get into court next year. He long ago went too far but the following line, which he posted this week, became the final straw:
“I suspect you are about to get whacked and it is about time.”
Cyberstalking is the “use of the internet to harass an individual or an organization. It includes the making of false accusations or statements of fact (as in defamation). Such cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them. They post false information about them on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups, chat rooms, or other sites that allow public contributions.” Mark Allan has done all of this.
Mark Allan, owner of the Find It SA directory which became Find It Knysna, has been the instigator of a defamation policy against this writer, Mike Hampton a.k.a. Wicked Mike, since October 2011. He has abused the internet by adopting false identities which state falsehoods that defamed me and attempted to sabotage my activism and charitable actions. He tried to ensnare Knysna Tourism and then turned against them when they never bit. He has had several run-ins with lawyers representing others. More recently, he defamed my lawyers many times as well as local businessman, Sheldon Meese of the Knysna Waterfront.
I’d hoped his defamation would fade away but after 14 months I was forced to begin legal proceedings. During this period he defamed others, even my lawyers, but the vast majority of his focus remained on me, so much so that his last wave of slander was blogged 2 days before the last court date i.e. he has no regard for how the court will perceive him.
The situation has been so bizarre that I suspect that Mark Allan needs to blame others for his own failures. In particular, I will show you that in his mind I seem to occupy the convenience of being the Devil.
The defamation describes me as and implies that I am: a pariah seeking to use the poor to get money from the government; morally bankrupt; weak and cowardly; a liar; a school-yard bully; likely taking dirty money from the ANC; an opportunist of the bad sort whose hampering service delivery by the DA.
He goes further to say or strongly imply that i: don’t care for the poor; stole the defendant’s idea for a project; had a project dropped by Knysna Tourism because it had no worth; campaigned against Knysna Tourism’s ex-CEO for revenge; was involved in a conspiracy with the Tourism Board to oust the ex-CEO; never quit the Knysna Ratepayers’ Association and was instead elbowed out; have nothing to offer Knysna; and that I present, in his words, “a carefully choreographed script to confuse, confound and deceive those gullible enough to believe it could ever be different.”
His statements were published on the internet but considering the small town that Knysna is, where words on the internet can quickly become word of mouth, the public figures and bodies mentioned, and association with controversial situations, it is reasonable to conclude that damage to my dignity and reputation will be most severe in our home town where I’ve spent several years offering free services to the town with the goal of uniting various projects into a charity.
Defamation was acted out through numerous blogs, comments on the Knysna-Plett Herald website and on the forum of GardenRoute.com. It has prompted Knysna Tourism to comment publicly twice (on GardenRoute.com and Knysna-Plett Herald’s website) and twice send an email to the plaintiff stating their dis-involvement. The latter is an irony considering that, for 29 months, I’ve battled Knysna Tourism for transparency after either severe mismanagement or criminal activities left the organisation’s budget hollow.
Over several more blogs, you’ll discover how insidiously unrelenting he has been. You can read Part 2 here.
A desire NOT to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom, ‘strue!
100% true…and 100% untrue. If all were left to their own evil devices, they’d grow into monsters.
I read your cyberstalker’s blogpost- that guy must have money to burn- he complains about his 10k lawyer bills, then does some more hate speech and defamation. Will he ever learn? While I was reading it, I imagined the sort of a person who wrote it- he must have a whiny voice and a wet nappy?. Really- someone should tell him- life is so much more fun, if you stop being an arse- Use emotion of Love not Fear…- make things better, not worse. You can always choose Love or Fear as motivation for the choices you make, and you can always see which one of those emotions drives others. Shame.
He’s an obsessive so learning is not the nature.
I really wish Love was the way to go all of the time but we live in a vicious world that sometimes scoffs at the notion. Not excusing him at all but, in a more general sense, think of our ‘beloved’ Municipality.
You know, I just called and spoke to someone at the Municipality about an enviro issue and they were very helpful and on the ball. There are some things I do LOVE about them. I know the names of various officials, and some of them even know me too. It is not ALL bad.
Sure, there are nice people everywhere. I may get disappointed when they place there jobs ahead of their bosses misdeeds but the real problem is leadership who can close departments and information to the public at will. That same enviro department was extremely unhelpful when the estuary shit problem first came to light. They were told not to talk. That’s not democratic.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
There is an excessive amount of both those in his blogs.