The mother of Jay Slater, the British teenager who died on holiday in Tenerife, says she has been “threatened” by online trolls since her son disappeared.
Mr Slater, an apprentice bricklayer from Oswaldtwistle, near Accrington, Lancashire, went missing in June after attending a music festival with friends on the holiday island. The 19-year-old’s body was found in a ravine close to where he was last seen about a month later and a post-mortem examination determined he had died in an accidental fall.
His mother, Debbie Duncan, 56, said she had suffered online harassment since her son’s death. “Words can’t describe how sick these people are,” she told The Sun. “I’ve been threatened by trolls.”
Conspiracy theories and false information spread rapidly online after Mr Slater went missing, and Ms Duncan was forced to deny rumours that her son had stolen a Rolex watch worth £12,000, incurring the wrath of drugs cartels.
She was contacted directly by several people who sent her drawings, including fake photos of her son being tortured. “The first week was crazy,” she says. “I was looking for Jay in my hotel room in Tenerife and I was being threatened by trolls.”
Duncan and his son Zac compiled details of people who didn’t hide their phone numbers – many were in the UK, but some messages came from as far away as Australia and the US.
“We got several calls saying, ‘I know where Jay is, he’s done this and that,'” she said. “Some people were screaming Jay’s name, or saying he’d been stabbed on the beach. And, oh my goodness, the stories were just unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. People were saying, ‘He’s in a hole, he’s chained up.’
“It was a really horrible experience and I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through and am still going through.”
She said the family had been “caught up” in several conspiracy theories and had been clinging to the hope that Mr Slater was still alive.
Ms Duncan says the harassment didn’t stop after the funeral – she recently received a handwritten note in the post which read: “What are you going to do with the money?” A GoFundMe page was set up while her son was missing and has raised more than £72,000, but Ms Duncan says it has only led to further harassment.
“People have criticized me for the GoFundMe I didn’t ask for,” she said, adding: “The only money that was used was for lodging, the dogsleds who came and repatriation costs that still haven’t been paid.”
“I talk to GoFundMe almost daily and they’ve been amazing and so supportive.”
