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Advice on legal options – ongoing online harassment of my autistic son

hutchymel

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some guidance and support, please. My autistic son (19) has been experiencing ongoing online harassment and bullying. This has included impersonation accounts, edited or defamatory images, and repeated hate speech — including derogatory slurs about autism.

We’ve reported it to the police, but so far the response has been very limited, and we’ve been told there’s not much they can do. I’m really struggling to understand what our options are now, both to protect him and to make sure this behaviour is taken seriously.

Could anyone advise:

  • What legal steps I can take if the police aren’t progressing things

  • Whether I should speak to a solicitor

  • Where to find free or affordable legal advice (especially around online harassment or hate crime involving a disabled person)

  • Any organisations or advocacy services that might help when the police response isn’t adequate

This has been extremely distressing for my son and for us as a family. Although he’s 19, he’s not emotionally 19 — so it’s been especially hard for him to process and cope with what’s happening. I just want to make sure his rights and safety are properly protected.

Thank you so much for any advice, experiences, or resources you can share.

— Mel
Mum to a bright and kind autistic young man who deserves to feel safe online

  • My approach would be to book a consult with a solicitor who specialises in this field (probably about £150 for an initial consult) while also speaking to Citizens Advice. I doubt Citizens Advice will have capacity for this sort of thing but you may be lucky.

    I would also take time to gather all the evidence you can as it can be easy to scrub this from the internet. Screen shots etc will be a good start but the solicitor can advise on how to do it properly.

    hutchymel said:
    This has been extremely distressing for my son and for us as a family. Although he’s 19, he’s not emotionally 19

    In the eyes of the law he is an adult so this won't factor into the legal process I think.

    My suspicions are that it will be very expensive (many thousands of £) to do anything about it and it is going to be very hard to prove who it is, but take the advice from the solicitor and do it by the book.

    He probably knows who is doing it so my personal approach would be to see if there was a way to visit them and encourage them to stop, or get someone to go do that who is more persuasive than me.

    I could not advise anyone else to do the same thing.