Brave tot’s family hit by sickening racist abuse
THE parents of a two-year-old boy with an incredible story have launched a petition to take down a vile, racist website that has targeted their young family.
Ashton Daley, 30, and her partner, Tom Greenwood, 27, from Moldgreen, hit the news in 2017 when their son Albie was born with his bowels on the outside of his body due to a rare condition called gastroschisis.
Albie underwent lifesaving surgery and made a stunning recovery.
He is now in his “terrible twos” and “causing trouble,” according to dad Tom.
But Tom and Ashton were horrified recently when they found out their story had been highlighted on a white supremacist online forum, alongside absolutely disgusting comments from website users. In the original post and the comments underneath, sickeningly racist terms were used when referring to Albie and Ashton, while Tom was described as a ‘race traitor.’
Tom said the couple were “absolutely gobsmacked” when the post was pointed out to them by a friend, who had been sent it by an anonymous person.
“I didn’t realise racism on that level existed any more,” he said.
“It makes you think terrible things. It’s the kind of comments where if you heard them in the street you would do something.”
Ashton was particularly shaken by some of the language.
“It even had her questioning stupid stuff like whether she’s good enough for me because of our races,” said Tom.
The couple have launched a petition on change.org to get the US webhost, Cloudflare, to remove the website.
Tom admitted: “I don’t know how possible that is. I know it’s America and they have different laws over there.”
The site in question is a notorious racist forum and previous attempts to take it down have failed. A similar petition on change.org received over 30,000 supporters before it was wound up.
A number of the site’s users have responded to the news of the petition.
One commented: “It only took the ****** about 2 years to find this thread. I look at it as a lost 22 months of free advertising for the site. But now we have free advertising.”
Tom is aware that launching a petition will bring attention to a website that deserves none but he takes the view that it will be overwhelmingly negative attention.
He explained: “To be honest the way I see it is the opposite, in respect of he may think it’s good publicity but it’s less than 24 hours into the petition and we’ve had over 600 people sign up.
“For every one racist person who finds out about the site and likes it, there will be 1,000 who think it’s disgusting.
“I am even going as far as emailing Boris Johnson.”
As far as Albie goes, he is now a happy two-year-old and totally unaware of the vile online abuse directed towards his family.
Tom and Ashton, who are currently trying for another child, ended their petition with a plea to protect young people from racism.
It reads: “Let’s not let our children grow up to see this despicable and evil side of the world.
“It’s not right and it’s not fair.”