I refused to be silenced, says Facebook libel case victor
Woman who successfully fought her ex-husband’s ‘strangle’ claim speaks about her 16-year ordeal
WHEN Nicola Coates was pushed against a sofa by her husband, who put his hands on her throat and “tried to strangle” her, it was one of the most terrifying experiences of her life.
In fact, those fleeting moments in which she feared that she might die were just the beginning of a much bigger ordeal. Her description of the attack on Facebook was later dissected word for word by a judge who admitted that he didn’t understand social media.
Using a Victorian law, her words were defined by the Oxford English Dictionary and it was ruled that on that basis, she had defamed her husband by implying that he was trying to kill her.
Now, just days after that decision was overturned by the highest court in the land, she has spoken about her ordeal for the first time.
Speaking from her home in Longwick, Bucks, she said: “The whole judiciary needs to catch up, and they need to realise that courts are being used to silence and control women. In some cases it’s an extension of the abusive relationship that is already there.”
Many people would have walked away as they saw the legal bills soaring to almost £200,000, but Miss Coates said: “I never wanted to give up, because I knew I told the truth.”
The cracks began to show shortly after her marriage to Ronald Stocker in 1999, and in 2003 an argument escalated into the incident which, years later, would be relived in court rooms.
The police arrived around two hours later and found reddening on her neck.
They stayed together for another seven years but in the end she “chose to leave, which was possibly my biggest crime in the world”.
Looking back, she now feels that she was controlled by him.
The couple divorced in 2012 and on Dec 23 that year his new lover, Deborah Bligh, wrote on Facebook that she was looking forward to waking up with “my man and his son” on Christmas Day.
In the following exchange between the two women, which Miss Coates maintains she thought was a private conversation, she revealed that her exhusband had “tried to strangle me”. He threatened her with libel in April 2013.
“It was horrific when I found out he was taking me to court,” Miss Coates remembers. “I had just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I had spent so much money fighting him through the family courts I definitely didn’t have money to fight a libel claim.”
Her husband, on the other hand, was a millionaire businessman.
In 2016, the High Court ruled the post was defamatory. as Mr Stocker’s “intention was to silence, not to kill”, Mr Justice Mitting ruled.
Miss Coates said that she could not let this become a “definition of acceptable behaviour” or allow the judiciary to have “a complete disregard for women’s safety”, but lost an appeal. Last week the Supreme Court overturned the rulings, with the judges noting that the reader of Facebook posts does not over-analyse things, but their response is “fleeting and impressionistic”.
Mr Stocker said last night that he was “disappointed by the ruling”, but added that the “trial judge found against my ex-wife regarding many of the allegations made about me and these findings were not appealed. We both need to move on”.
For Miss Coates, who has become involved with the Centre for Women’s Justice, moving on will be helping others. “I did it for a much bigger picture than me – to stand up for what is right.”
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