Presentation on the Channel 4 documentary 'My Social Network Stalker'

1. By Lucy Standring

2.  “For three and a half years Ruth Jeffery was
subjected to mental abuse by an unknown stalker.
This True Stories film tells Ruth's story, and its
shocking conclusion.” – Channel 4.
 Ruth‟s cyber stalker ultimately turned out to be her
boyfriend (Shane Webber), who wrecked and
controlled her life for over 3 years.
 Ruth reverted from a
confident, adventurous and
outgoing person, to becoming
almost like a child again, asking
for help and advice about
everything.

3.  Ruth and Shane met in secondary school where
they were put into the same specialist class.
 The pair got closer and eventually became a
couple, with boy being each others first
boyfriend/girlfriend.
 Shane created a websites containing images of
himself and Ruth. In a lot of the images Ruth
looked uncomfortable, and it was later revealed
that she was forced by Shane to have her
photograph taken. The school the pair attended
found out about the website, and due to Ruth's
awkwardness in a lot of the photos, Shane was
asked to remove the site.

4.  Ruth and Shane split up when Ruth and her family
moved to Southampton.
 4 years later – Ruth and Shane reconnected
through the internet. Shane asked Ruth if she
missed him and spoke about how “you never
forget about your first love”. Shane lived in
Nottingham and Ruth lived in
Southampton. Ruth's father was
originally not told about the pairs
rekindled relationship.

5.  2009 – Ruth began a degree in Computer Science at
Loughborough University.
 Ruth then started getting a lot of MSN requests from
people she used to go to school with. These people
were sending her messages asking how she
was, telling her that they really like her at school and
asking her if she wanted to meet them for a drink.
Ruth found this strange as she did not speak to
these people (even when she was at school) and
was not popular.
 Ruth then started to receive anonymous phone calls
(with no-one on the other end), first on her landline
and then on her mobile.
 There was also incidents of people knocking on
Ruth's front door late at night.

6.  Christmas day 2009 – Ruth was contacted by someone she
used to go school with, saying they had a picture of her naked.
The picture was sent to Ruth and it turned out the image wasn‟t
of her, but of her face placed onto the body of another person.
 2011 – Ruth received images from a MSN contact of herself in
the shower. These images were taken by Shane, who thought it
would be funny to burst in on Ruth in the shower and take
images of her on his phone.
 Ruth panicked when she saw the images of herself. Shane was
the only person that had access to the images, but Ruth did not
think it could have been him and therefore believed someone
had stolen them off of Shanes phone.
 Ruth wanted to send the images to the police but was
discouraged by Shane who told her that she was „his‟ and he
didn‟t want anyone else to see her in that way (naked).

7.  Ruth searched her own name on the internet to find
that there were a number of naked images of herself
on adult websites.
 This affected Ruth so much that she couldn‟t
sleep, eat and didn‟t want to leave the house (in
case somebody recognised her as being on an adult
site).
 Ruth's mother (Elaine) was then tagged in a photo
on Facebook, which showed Ruth, again naked.
Elaine found it difficult to deal with, as Gordon
(Ruth‟s father) did not know about the pairs rekindled
relationship.

8.  After the first set of exposed images somehow made their
way onto the internet, Shane still took more. Ruth did not
want to take these images, as she was scared they may also
make it onto the internet, but Shane promise her that this
would not happen.
 Ruth refused to take the images, but was eventually
persuaded by Shane who guilt tripped her by saying things
such as “shows how much you love and trust me” and that if
she didn't allow him to take the images then her would leave
her.
 Ruth allowed Shane to take a second lot of exposed images
of her, which like the first lot, somehow made it onto the
internet.
 Shane began to blame his friend Lee for the photos being
leaked. Lee was contacted by the police who asked if he
knew Ruth and told him that she was reporting him for
harassment. He immediately rang Shane to ask him if he
knew anything about the situation, who ultimately denied
knowing anything about it.

9.  Ruth started to contacting adult sites about getting the
images of herself taken down. Eventually the images
were removed, but ultimately made it back onto the sites
again.
 The police then visited Lee to give him a final caution for
harassment, telling him that if he carried on they would
arrest him.
 Ruth asked Shane to start helping her to get the images
taken down from the internet. He agreed and as soon as
he found an image, would ring Ruth to tell her.
 One day Ruth found an image of herself online, that was
linked to a profile page containing further images of her.
On this profile there was also a folder of images named
„Tributes‟, in which men had taken printed images of Ruth
naked and placed them against their private area.

10.  It turned out that there were a number of
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Bebo profiles set up of
people pretending to be Ruth.
 A friend contacted Ruth asking “why are you being like
this?”. Her MSN account had been hacked and the hacker
had told Ruth‟s friend that she didn‟t like her.
 It was then found out that false email addresses had been
created in Ruth's name. From these addresses emails
were sent to Ruth‟s friend, who believed they were from
Ruth. These emails had the desired effect and Ruth
became alienated from friends and colleague‟s.
 Ruth developed OCD due to the events that happened.
She had to check things such as light switches and taps
around 8 times before she felt safe to leave the house.

11.  1st June 2011 – Shane started to become annoyed with Ruth
as she had not been speaking to him as much as usual.
 The following morning Ruth went to sign into her MSN
account to find that her password was incorrect and that
someone had hacked into her account. The same had been
done to her Facebook account. She thought Shane had
done it and confronted him, but he denied it.
 It turned out that Ruth‟s sister (Eve) had also had her
Facebook account hacked and the two
girls had been tags in pictures that
weren‟t them.
 Ruth‟s mother and sister agreed that the
stalker could be Shane, as it had to be
someone who had access to both of
their friends lists.

12.  Ruth's parents drove to her (at university) to tell her that they
thought her stalker was Shane. Obviously Ruth did not believe
the claims and wanted evidence.
 Ruth eventually got her Facebook account back, only to have it
hacked again. When she had access to her account she noticed
Shane had sent an abusive message to the „hacker‟ telling them
to give the password back. This message made Ruth believe it
couldn‟t be him, as she did not think he would send a message
to himself.
 Whilst Ruth‟s parents were with here at University a man
knocked on the door asking if Ruth lived there. This was
followed with texts saying “What you doing... Aint standing
around any longer”, which were assumed to be off of the man
that knocked on her door.
 Police picked up the man that knocked at Ruth‟s door, who said
he had been talking to someone that he thought was Ruth and
had been invited round for sexual favours.

13.  Shane contacted Eve (Ruth‟s sister) saying things such as “Don‟t
forget to come and kiss me as I am the birthday boy” and “Happy
valentines day xxxx”.
 Ruth started to receive messages saying “Haha Shanes been
cheating on you... He‟s sent me pictures of another girl at his
house”. These pictures were sent to Ruth and contained a naked
girl lying on Shanes bed. Shanes excuse was that he had uploaded
images of every room in his flat when he first moved in, and that
someone must have cut out the image of the naked girl and put it
into the image of his room.
 Shane became very controlling towards Ruth. So much so that he
even controlled the way she made tea, complaining at her if she did
not make it how she normally did or how he liked it.
 Shane asked Ruth to make pornographic videos. At first Ruth
refused, but gave in due to Shane getting violent and saying hurtful
things. Ruth was under the impression that these videos would
remain private, but they didn't and Shane stuck by his story that he
had been hacked. Ruth still believed it was Lee.

14.  Lee started to receive abusive messages from Ruth's
username, accusing him and also threatening him and his
family. Lee did not reply and instead saved the messages.
 19th June – An email was sent from Ruth‟s email address
to her father, telling him to search for her name. The email
also had images attached to it, which Ruth‟s father did not
open as he knew what they were.
 The email was traced back to a commercial
server provider in the U.S, so Ruth‟s father
got into contact with them.
 22nd – Ruth‟s father received a letter from
VPSCITY abuse department saying that
they had suspended the server and it was
being queued for termination. It turned out
that VPSCity.net was registered to a Shane
Webber, Ruth‟s boyfriend.

15.  On the day of his interview, Shane spoke
about how had just left Ruth in the town
square and that he was meeting her
afterwards as well. When asked Ruth
denied this, saying she‟d not met him on
that day. Shane said that Ruth was lying.
 Throughout the interview Shane denied
everything, that was until the police told
him that they were going to search his and
his mothers addresses. He then admitted
to the whole thing.

16.  Ruth became very worn down and often couldn‟t sleep or eat
properly, often through panicking and worrying about
everything. This also affected her university life, meaning she
couldn‟t concentrate in lectures due to being to tired or thinking
about the situation.
 Ruth developed OCD due to the situation. This made her late
for university a lot as she had to check things multiple times
before she felt comfortable to leave the house (usually 8 times).
 Ruth changed from being a confident young woman, to a
completely different state due to the torment she endured. A
psychologist stated that what happened was as bad as physical
assault, but that the only difference is physical assault would
over quicker and internet harassment can be interminable
(endless).
 Ruth does not trust her own instincts anymore. This means she
worries about simple things like driving her car, shopping or
whether to go to a party.

17.  The maximum sentence that Shane could
have got at the magistrates court is 6
months.
 Ruth felt that Shane should have been put
into prison for the three years that he made
her life hell.
 Shane was imprisoned for 4
months and given a 5 year
restraining order to stay away
from Ruth and her family.
 Shane only server 2 months of
his sentence.

18.  Ruth felt that this all happened due to jealousy, as it all started
when she told Shane she was going to university. He saw that
Ruth was getting on with life, making friends etc, and he did not
like this, especially if the friends were male.
 She also feels boredom could be partly to blame, as Shane did
not work or have anything to do, so just stayed at home all day.
 Ruth told of how she could understand if Shane thought at the
start that it would pull them closer to each other,
as she turned to him for help. Although she did not
understand why he enjoyed controlling her and her
life so much.
 She finds it difficult to explain how much hurt the
situation caused and cannot understand how
someone do it to another person.
 “I was intentionally controlled, bullied and harmed”
- Ruth

19.  Ruth‟s mother tried to block her feelings towards the
situation out, and resorted to drink to cope.
 Ruth‟s family felt that the issue was not whether
there was anymore people like Shane, but the
setting up of boundaries of what behaviour is
acceptable.
 They also felt it was important for the court to not
discourage victims to come forward, which they felt
would happen if a relative punishment was not given
to Shane.
 The family felt that Shane should have been
punished an equal amount to the chaos that he
ultimately caused in Ruth‟s life.

20.  CHANNEL4 (2012) 4OD My Social Network Stalker [WWW]. Available from:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/my-social-network-stalker/4od [Accessed:
02/03/2012].
 REALSCREEN (2012) Ruth Jeffery [Online image]. Available from:
http://realscreen.com/2012/02/14/c4-rize-tackle-my-social-network-stalker/ [Accessed:
02/03/2012].
 GAWKER (2011) Ruth Jeffery and Shane Webber [Online image]. Available from:
http://gawker.com/shane-webber/ [Accessed: 02/03/2012].
 MIRROR (2012) Ruth Jeffery and her mother [Online image]. Available from:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article691076.ece/ALTERNATES/s615/+Ruth+Jeffrey(
PICTURED+WITH+MOTHER+ELAINE)+turned+to+boyfriend+Shane+Webber
[Accessed: 02/03/2012].
 THESUN (2011) Shane Webber [Online image]. Available from:
http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01379/SNN2211BXX-380_1379755a.jpg
[Accessed: 02/03/2012].
 BELFASTTELEGRAPH (2011) Shane Webber on court day [Online image]. Available
from: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/uk/girlfriend-hurt-by-
internet-stalker-16071195.html [Accessed: 02/03/2012].
 WHATSONXIAMEN (2011) Ruth Jeffery [Online image]. Available from:
http://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news_images/e8baa53914bfa3ffda531497_7.jpg
[Accessed: 02/03/2012].