Tag Archives: Tabloid harassment

Sufiah Yusof Oxford 2021 – Letter I have sent today – not sure this will work but that’s the horror of media harassment. Sent to the Mail, Mail on Sunday, the Times, Sunday Times, Mirror, Guardian, Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, the Sun, the Express, the BBC, and Paul Dacre (via Kathy Dacre) to see if that can stop harassment. Plus other organisations – its horrific thinking of how many there are and they all “work together and pass on information” to specifically blackmail their target and damage them as much as possible to “get the story”

21/04/2021

Dear Sir/Madam

My name is Sufiah Yusof.

I am writing as your newspaper/media organisation and its employees and freelancers have an established record of bullying and harassing me in order to print articles designed to violate my privacy.

This has caused me huge sadness and distress, damage to my health and relationships, and disruption to my life over the years.

Although there is clearly absolutely no “beneficial public interest” in my private details (other than that which you and your colleagues chose to create to generate reads and views sales) this has been completely life-destroying.

I note these include:

  • As a child, my painful personal and private details were repeatedly published to millions of readers in a sensationalist, dishonest, manipulative, aggressive, and abusive way
  • I was completely “dehumanised” for clicks and reads.
  • Stalking me at any location I was at and publishing details “to give your readers updates”. This was done in very calculated way – plotting in advance to target any “events” in my life. 
  • Amplifying this harassment by goading my (clearly abusive and estranged with very little mental capacity to understand what you were doing) parents into co-operating with articles to encourage others to “track me down” and using this as a “device” to stalk me and to emotionally blackmail me and damage me.
  • A News UK/Mail senior journalist/editor, Keith Gladdis filming me naked when I was 23 and in a very vulnerable position to blackmail me into giving an interview.
  • Doing your best to manipulate me in a very cunning and calculated way – not just one rogue journalist, but teams collaborating behind the scenes to exploit any vulnerabilities I had.
  • This would be done to create a narrative that I was “co-operating with you” and “publicity-seeking” and “consenting to this harassment” and “agreeing to give interviews and private details” so I could never get any support against your stalking.
  • Further, blackmailing me and setting me up and linking me to as many “controversial emotional issues as you could” (sex, religion, child abuse). Turning every action I did into a “global reality show” with no privacy.
  • So you could completely isolate me from mainstream society, turn me into some “celebrity” figure so there was more profit on stalking me in future, lure any predators to me, and induce as much everyday harassment as you could, and destroy any chances of a dignified private life.

Over time, I feel that this desire to harass has not waned. 

  • You and your colleagues know that you can get profit/clicks/reads for stalking and harassing me, so feel I am “a good target” as any “access” will be “worth it in sales”. You like to target vulnerable people.
  • You want revenge for me having built a low-key private life where I have (somewhat) escaped you and your colleagues stalking, abuse and harassment.  
  • An aim of targeting me during my childhood was to “build me up” with as many over-emotional, grandiose claims as possible for a global audience, so you could continue to profit from stories about me and turn me into a “cash cow” as you would completely destroy any chances I had of a dignified private life and force me into a situation so I would have to live from selling my story.
  • Your goal was collaborate with your media colleagues to create a situation where you had complete control.
  • I would be able to access no support from anyone or move forward with my life, as you would have ensured I was presented as a “freak” who no normal person would want to engage with, and whose only social contacts were journalists and other predators wanting to make money out of me.
  • If I didn’t “co-operate” and give up, and offer up details of my life and turn my life into a “public child abuse story” where I was set up like I was on a freak-show, for titillation and reads and clickbait, you’d simply stalk and bully me and do it anyway.
  • However, even with no resources or powerful friends, and having to work around both your well-funded stalking and harassment (and a very damaged, estranged, and unsupportive family with very poor social boundaries and regard for privacy) I was able to avoid this.
  • I feel this will have enraged you as you have “lost your cash cow” and desire for control.
  • You want revenge for me having called out you and your media colleagues for your behaviour on my blog www.inquiringfeminist.com and my Twitter account.
  1. I understand Caroline Gidman (Caroline Gladdis), the wife of the journalist who filmed me naked (Keith Gladdis) is a former employee of the BBC/the Sunday Times/the Wright Stuff.
  1. I note all of these organisations have specifically sought to target me since I started my blog, contacting me in “pretend friendly way” whilst clearly looking to exploit any vulnerabilities and “set me up”.
  1. Me speaking about my trauma caused by her husband’s abuse seems to have caused Caroline Gidman to want to use her contacts to “get even” with me, or “set me up” so I look like I’m “publicity seeking” to conceal what Keith Gladdis did to me.
  1. Keith Gladdis used his mother Patricia (Trish) Gladdis’s or his sister Rebecca (Becki) Gladdis’s e-mail account to attempt to plant cocaine on me before filming me naked in Manchester (the e-mail IP address came from an account at Manchester Metropolitan University, where Trish Gladdis worked and Becki Gladdis studied).
  1. This level of potential criminal harassment – planting drugs on someone – is a well-known technique used by the News of the World which I expect still is used by its former employees, and fills me with complete fear.
  1. By speaking out against someone like Keith Gladdis (I understand he is responsible for other harassment via his tabloid journalism, so I feel it is helpful and in the public interest to be aware of what his family can do) I may have made myself vulnerable to a repeat of this.
  1. Although I use social media and blogging unpaid and in my spare time (and not for fun – I do not enjoy being “out there” or the kind of people it draws to me, but simply to protect myself and as some way to have a small voice against your well-resourced teams of bullies) I have noted and made records that you and your colleagues are clearly “monitoring what I write”.
  1. I believe there may now be motivation for still regaining control of me and causing maximum harassment and abuse, and to damage my mental health and credibility so that I cannot speak out against you and am left vulnerable.

I believe that rather than contact me directly via my blog (where there is a clear contact form) or Twitter (where I am clearly active), so I can decline contact with informed consent, you will be aiming to harass and blackmail me.

Based on past experience, this may be:

  1. “Doxxing” me – printing my address, colleagues names, location, relationship details, workplace details, recent photos of me, to violate my privacy.
  • Targeting anyone connected to me so you can “extract” information from them, or pretend to just be “having a chat” then printing it like they’ve been “giving an interview about me”. This will be done to isolate me and leave me threatened and paranoid.
  • Door- stepping and contacting any estranged family members I have who I have not seen in many years (who are severely mentally vulnerable, some who don’t even speak English as a first language – and have very poor social boundaries and awareness of privacy) to “get a comment about me” and mention me to them to “goad them into a reaction”.
  • Or – as the Times and the Mail did at my wedding – simply give them my location and details to encourage them to turn up and cause a physical confrontation.
  • And then publish this to “humiliate me” and “get at me” and force me “comment in reply”.
  • Basically exploit any private tension and mentally unwell people to cause a horrendous public confrontation that would not have occurred without your manipulation.
  • And then use this as a tool to harass me and publish my personal details and pretend you’re “giving my family a voice”, knowing I’ll then have been blackmailed and forced into a situation where I cannot complain.
  • Accessing any driving licence records or medical records or other records to illegally obtain my address so you can doorstep me. Or even worse, as Keith Gladdis tried to do, plant illegal substances on me. Basically anything so I can be “set-up” and bullied.
  • Collecting information and working out when the “best moment to target me” is to create maximum disruption so I cannot seek help and my life is as damaged as possible.
  1. Writing some (allegedly nice) “faux praise/faux concern/general interest” article, but throw as many details of me in to completely violate my privacy and “start a feeding frenzy” with other media organisations getting in on the action and encourage a global audience to “discuss every aspect of my life” and stalk me.
  1. Obtaining details about me, then contacting me to directly blackmail me and threatening “the story will be out there” unless I co-operate and give what looks like a “consensual interview”.
  1. Or contacting me to lie and make things up to manipulate me – claim to be “wanting a comment on something different” or offering a work or charity opportunity. Or make things up and claim you want to “help” me and encourage me not to confide in the police or anyone official.
  1. Then force me into something completely different, centre me in the article, present me in a certain way, and give my details without my consent.
  1. “Doxxing” me by publishing personal identifiable details to “feed” online harassment.
  1. Using any student journalists or freelancers or private investigators or local newspaper journalists or working behind the scenes with other journalists to “do your dirty work” for you.
  1. Trying to bully and isolate me by contacting everyone connected with me and claim to be “having a casual chat” to get information about me or attributing quotes to them, to make me feel paranoid and like I have to “police “ every interaction I am in.
  1. And – even worse – to make me think I can’t trust anyone and try to make me “confront everyone I know” when it’s your manipulation that has done this. If this is done, this is clearly “targeted harassment of me”, and not people I know volunteering to give interviews about me!

I write to formally record that I am and have been living in fear

I have and will always have to take many, many precautions due to your horrendous behaviour and motives.

This is harassment and coercive control.

You want to use your immense resources and me to “give in” to your power by “having to co-operate with journalists and give my private details” or “they will stalk me anyway”, at great personal cost and distress and humiliation.

I request you desist from this course of stalking, harassment, and bullying, or any others not listed above which you may choose to take.                                                    

Sufiah Yusof