Hachette author Stephen Leather has been accused by two fellow thriller writers of cyber-abuse and bullying. One of the alleged victims, Jeremy Duns, has been dealing with anonymous sites and accounts set up to attack him. He wrote that the purpose of the sites are “to simply sling as much mud my way as possible and hope that something sticks, and to make it so that if anyone Googles me – readers, potential readers, publishers, producers, etc – they might be influenced by the fact that apparently lots of people hate me and I am a Terrible Person Who Has Done Lots of Terrible Things... The fact that the accusations are false and in most cases fairly obviously so doesn’t matter much."
Sounds like history repeating itself, though this time outside of the romance genre. One of NMCA founder Tina Engler's most blatant stalkers went so far as to brag online that she has google glutted with negative information about her (Engler). In other words, what Duns has described is fairly typical behavior of an abuser who needs their right to be online revoked for life.
JK Rowling had this to say...
