Roberta Teller's Story of Cyber Harassment

OUR STORY OF CYBER HARASSMENT

We cannot tell you WHY we were cyber bullied-that is something that only the sick person who created these posts can answer,  However, we CAN tell you what happened.  Here is the truth.

In late July/early August of 2010, we were briefly in contract on a property in Mendocino County.  During the inspection period, we did just that; we began the inspection process.  During this period, it became clear to us that this 2 bedroom/2bath home would not work for us for several reasons:

• When we made the offer, we believed that it woud be within our budget to add on an office or workshop space. We discovered that it would be very expensive to do this and we couldn’t afford it.
• Upon returning to the home, we realized that it was just too remote and we were concerned that we would feel isolated.
• The home was relatively new and some of the construction was still outgassing from the toxic building materials that were used.

We cancelled our contract a week after the offer was made, well within the legal time limit.  The sellers signed off on the agreement.

In October 2010, my partner googled our names and discovered these horribles posts.  We were completely shocked, mortified and sickened by what we saw.  At that time, we  were living in a (vacation) rental in Guerneville as we had sold our home in Berkeley at the end of August. Most ot our belongings were in a storage unit in Emeryville, and we still hadn’t found our dream home.  It was a difficult and challenging time by itself and these disgusting blogs added another layer of unrest and stress, to say the least.  So here we were, spending much of our time and almost all of our energy looking for a home; we were feeling dislocated and ungrounded living in this state of limbo; and now, how do we deal with this cyber attack on us?  

We talked to “reputation management” companies and they wanted between $1500 and $1750 each to push these vile posts to pages 3 and 4 on Google.  Our attorney wrote a letter to Google requesting that these posts be removed and our request was rejected under the guise of “free speech.”  We spoke to at least 8 attorneys who basically agreed that it could wind up costing us a lot of money and could stir up the sicko blogger and what would stop her from writing more blogs about us......An attorney friend of ours suggested that we take her to small claims court because she libeled us. 

The truth is we really hoped that it would just go away..........and it never did.  

It’s now almost over a year and a half since these disgusting blogs were posted about us and it is now our time to stop the cycle of (cyber) abuse.  We want to tell our story because we are not alone.  Cyberbullying among children and teens is a growing problem causing terrible injury to innocent young people.  And cyber harassment (that’s adult cyberbullying) has prompted a multimillion dollar reputation management business......what does that tell you? 

At this time, the vile blogs are still there and we are countering with our own blogs.  The story is evolving every day and while we cannot change the past, we can shape the future and maybe make a difference along the way.