Who am I?

We are Rebecca Tennant and a group of Jon Tennant’s friends and family. 

We believe the recent cancelling of Jon Tennant  before his death is a situation that should not be ignored, a blemish on the open science community.

Jons version of events is here; http://fossilsandshit.com/the-opencon-saga-5-month-update/

As you can see from the links, Jon was at the origin of one confirmed public incident. Regarding this incident, Open Con edited their code of conduct to include anonymous reporting and a sanction that allowed Jon to be banned for life, two years after the incident took place. Jon was then the object of a second, unverified and anonymous accusation (the nature of which remains unknown), upon which Open Con acted without neutral investigation or adequate safeguarding in place. They subsequently edited their code of conduct a second time to allow the possibility to publicize the already made ban, conflating the measures taken on a previous incident as a response to the new uninvestigated anonymous accusation. 

OpenCon then made their ban public on Twitter, naming Jon, and proceeded to remain silent as Jon was harassed, bullied and lied about very publicly in direct consequence to OpenCon’s Tweet.

Jon had a breakdown, his family were stalked and harassed. Jon lost his jobs, speaking engagements and book contracts and at no point did OpenCon or any other organisation step in, bring clarity to the accusations or take any actions to reduce the online mobbing or harassment.   

Jon finally moved to Bali to recover, which is where he had a fatal motorbike accident.

Since then further anonymous reporting has caused others in the OpenScience community to be removed from their community- by the new organisation, InvestinOpen, an potential attempt at a rebrand from OpenCon (members of the previous committee have crossed over). 

Summary - we would like to work with lawyers at Curzon Green law firm to reduce the likelihood of this happening again, by drawing attention to the unverified claims and administrative errors behind acting on anonymous allegations and unverified accusations, and publicising them. We would also like to know what the unverified claims were regarding Jon.

We believe Jon’s right to privacy was violated and he was a victim of malicious communication and gross administrative negligence by OpenCon. 

We have spent the last few months working with Curzon Green to establish scenarios going forward, and are now at a stage where we need more information before we can proceed. Can you help us get this information?

Call to action - We are raising £600 at present as an aid to information gathering in partnership with Curzon Green law firm  

What are we trying to achieve? - At present we need more information to proceed with any further steps. We want to know;

What Jon was accused of and who accused him.

We believe the accusations against Jon are extremely likely untrue, and it is not acceptable that his family and friends in his death still do not know what he was accused of. The accusations should be neutrally tested. 

This case could set a precedent in the way companies handle accusations of sexual harassment through bringing to light the harm OpenCon has caused by not putting in place adequate safeguards and not responding adequately to an allegation.

We hope the case will also impact online behaviours of mobbing and cancelling and how organisations and individuals handle these behaviours. We hope it also impacts Twitter and how they respond to reports of bullying and mobbing.

What is the next step in the case? - 

How much we are raising and why? - £600 to find our lawyers to contact a verity of people with a view of gathering information.

Thank you