Dear friends and supporters,

I hope this update finds you well. I wanted to take a moment to provide you with the latest developments in my ongoing legal journey.

Following my last update, I'm pleased to inform you that all necessary steps have been taken, and we are now in a period of awaiting the court's next actions. Specifically, we are waiting for the court to set a new hearing date, which will be critical in determining several key matters, including our application for judgment and the defendant’s application for security of costs.

As some of you may know, the court term is currently closed and is scheduled to reopen in October. This means that the hearing is likely to be set sometime around then. While this pause can be frustrating, it is a natural part of the legal process, especially in a case as complex and drawn out as mine. My legal team remains fully prepared and committed to ensuring that we are ready to proceed the moment the court term resumes.

During this waiting period, we are using the time to strengthen our position and prepare for the next steps. However, the costs of doing so are significant, and we urgently need to raise additional funds to cover these expenses. If you are able to contribute, your donation, no matter the amount, will have a tremendous impact. Your support has brought me this far, and it is vital as we approach the final stages of this legal battle.

I know that this waiting period can be challenging, but we are closer than ever to a resolution. Your continued support and patience mean the world to me as we navigate this final stretch. As soon as I receive any further updates from the court, I will let you know.

Thank you, as always, for standing with me.

Sincerely,

Frankie

Dear friends and supporters,

In the latest development of our legal journey against Vinnicombe, we find ourselves yet again at an extremely pivotal moment. As you are aware from my previous update, the court issued an "Unless Order", giving Vinnicombe until 29 January to file a compliant defence. Unfortunately, in what has become a pattern, Vinnicombe submitted another non-compliant defence late in the evening of January 28.

Our legal team has worked tirelessly to ensure that justice is served, and their dedication brought us to a significant recent step: the hearing that took place on 19 April. While we hoped this hearing would bring our case to a conclusion, the court mercifully granted Vinnicombe a fourth and final opportunity to submit a compliant defence, under the instructions that he would seek legal representation. Vinnicombe was ordered to provide his updated defence by 17 May 2024.

The importance of the 19 April hearing cannot be overstated—it represented another crucial opportunity to move closer to putting this to an end for myself and my family. However, the proceedings have not yet concluded, and we find ourselves preparing for what we hope will be the concluding hearing. Vinnicombe has now submitted his amended and final defence to the court.

To continue our fight, we need your help more than ever. The deadline for us to submit our application for judgment to the court is this Friday 31 May 2024. Alongside this, my legal must respond to other applications that Vinnicombe has made.

The costs associated with these next steps and ensuring we have the strongest possible representation are substantial and the largest barrier that we will need to overcome, which is why I graciously reach out to you.

As you know my legal team have generously donated over £100,000 ($130,000) worth of work and time to keep the case progressing. I am eternally grateful to them, and to all of you for making this all possible.

I am reaching out to you, our community of supporters, to assist us in raising the necessary funds to cover these legal expenses. Your contributions, no matter the size, play a vital role in this next and hopefully last phase of our legal battle.

We stand on the threshold of a potentially defining moment in our case. With your support, we can approach this next hearing and deal with all the applications with all the resources we need.

Thank you for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Frankie

Dear supporters and friends,

First, I am pleased to report that Vinnicombe's YouTube channel has now been deactivated, which is a great relief to my family and myself.

There is still, however, a little way to go in relation to my legal claim against Vinnicombe, in the High Court in London. We want to make sure that Vinnicombe is never able to harass or defame me or exploit our family’s misery again.

So, after various preliminary steps in the proceedings, and as a result of Vinnicombe’s failure to engage properly with my claim, our lawyers have successfully asked the court to make an "Unless Order". This gives Vinnicombe a final deadline to file a legally sound defence by 29 January 2024 at 4 pm or face the prospect of judgment being entered against him.

Against all the odds, we are very close to the point of a resolution. This would go some way to providing the peace which we have been craving since the moment the terrible tragedy hit our family.

Cohen Davis, my lawyers, have generously donated more than £100,000 ($130,000) worth of work to keep the case progressing and I am very grateful to my entire legal team and for the work they do for us.

Our hope is that the steps we have taken so far will mean that Vinnicombe face final judgment against him, together with an injunction prohibiting him from harassing and defaming me, as well as an order for costs. Whatever happens next, further interaction with the Court and at least one hearing will almost certainly be required for this to take place.

The estimated legal cost of the next - and hopefully final - stage is approximately £35,000, which we need to raise, in order to meet the costs of going to Court to obtain a final Order against Vinnicombe.

We are potentially only a couple of steps away from finding peace and solace and I will be most grateful to anyone who can help us reach our final goal.

Thank you for standing with us.

Sincerely,

Frankie Rzucek

Hello everyone,

I am delighted finally to be in a position to provide you all with an update on how this case is going but first, I want to express how overwhelmed I am with all your support to date. Without you all I would never have been able to progress my claim. 

Filing a claim

I am overjoyed to update you all that on 10 March 2023, my claim was served against the man who has been the principal cause of so much distress to me and my family, Alan Vinnicombe, the so-called “Armchair Detective”, in the King’s Bench Division of the High Court in London. Mr Vinnicombe is based in the UK and that is why we have decided to bring proceedings there. 

I know you have all questioned why this has taken so long, but the evidence to consider in my case was extraordinary, with hundreds of YouTube videos to consider and hundreds of hours of content to view/preserve. As a result of the constant ongoing posting by Mr Vinnicombe, the scale of the task increased yet further even after I started fund-raising. My team even had to respond to a letter of claim I received in relation to allegations that I was the one who was harassing Mr Vinnicombe.

It has taken my legal team an exceptional amount of time to get the case into good shape, but we have finally reached a stage where all pre-court matters have been completed. What this means is that my team served on my harasser a formal letter of claim and we have moved onto official Court proceedings by serving a Claim Form and Particulars of Claim, seeking damages and an injunction in a claim by me for defamation and harassment. As a result of Mr Vinnicombe’s failure to reply to correspondence or cooperate with my lawyers, we had to incur significant further costs by making an application to the Court for permission to serve him by email. 

I want to thank every single person who has supported me and everyone who has sent me messages of kindness, support, and solidarity from around the world. After going through the isolating experience of losing some of my closest family members, it is reassuring to know that there are individuals out there who will go out of their way to uplift the spirits of my family and me.

Further attacks from trolls

During the time it has taken my legal team to get my case to this stage, I have also been targeted online by trolls accusing my family and I from stealing money from this fund-raising process. This false allegation is one which Mr Vinnicombe has also made against me in a number of his YouTube videos.

I am very disappointed and saddened to hear these accusations that I have scammed people for money and have not put the donations towards the cause described in my fund-raising efforts. I can confirm these rumours are not true. At no point do I have any access to the money and, as with all cases funded through Crowdjustice, the funds go directly from the website to my legal team. As  I have explained, due to the enormous amounts of published material to consider, the progress up until this point has been slow. However, my team wanted to ensure that every single threat, accusation and defamatory story created was assessed as far as possible. Therefore, this was a process which could not be rushed.

I want to ensure that these rumours are addressed and the kind-hearted people who have donated to my cause receive reassurance that their funds are being used to address the harassment and defamation which has so badly affected me and my family. The case is moving in a positive direction, and my family and I need all the support we can get to obtain justice.

Next steps

Mr Vinnicombe is aware of the claim, and there is a Court-ordered timetable in place for him formally to respond. We are now waiting to see if Mr Vinnicombe will attempt to defend my claim, or if a resolution can instead be reached. The next steps will be dependent on how he responds, but if he chooses to defend the claim, which he has previously indicated online he would do, then I will need to push ahead with the Court process. This is a complicated area of law and will involve significant further work by the lawyers I have instructed, whatever happens next. I will be able to share more detailed information about the case once a formal response has been received. 

I am very grateful to my legal team who have been working hard to push this matter through to this point, despite me not yet having raised enough money to cover all of the costs. To complete the next steps, I will need further support from all the kind people who supported me previously to help me urgently deal with the progress of the case. At this stage, I am trying to raise the stretch target of £75,000 to pay the outstanding invoices for my legal team, and to be able to respond to whatever Mr Vinnicombe does next.

You have all played a vital role in helping to stop this abuse and your support will be forever appreciated. After all the grief my family and I have gone through, we wish to just move forward without being harassed, defamed, and linked to baseless conspiracy theories every day of our lives. I want to send a clear message to Mr Vinnicombe and others. My goal is to hold Mr Vinnicombe to account so that other vulnerable families will not suffer as mine has. 

I am grateful for all your continuing support, and I will be back with an update very soon.

Love,

Frankie

I want to thank all of you who have generously donated to this cause. I also want to update you all on our progress so far in putting an end to the online torment which has affected me and my family.

Thank you so much to everyone who is making this possible. We are all touched by how much people care and are very grateful for the many good people in the world who are making a real effort to support us.

Press coverage 

There has been some positive coverage of the case, which you can read here:

https://www.ladbible.com/news/news-shanann-watts-brother-has-set-up-a-crowd-funder-to-support-her-family-20211105

Legal team update

Thanks to your donations, Cohen Davis' legal team have finalised the first stage of their preparations. This included gathering the evidence and identifying the parts which are most harassing and defamatory.

The legal team have indicated that the evidence, which includes hundreds of hours of video and thousands of online posts and comments, show a case of defamation and harassment against my family and I, which means, we can move forward with the case.

We are getting a barrister

On this basis, our lawyers have approached one of the leading legal Counsel in the UK, who specialises in this type of work to join the legal team. He has kindly agreed to join the legal team and I will be providing more information later on, once he has formally accepted the brief.  This, however, is a very positive development that gives our family a great deal of confidence moving forward.

Statement from our lawyers

Since we have begun this campaign, both my family and my lawyers have been receiving scores of email and telephone calls, not all of which, as you can image, are pleasant.

Our lawyers explained that whilst they would have liked to, they are unable to speak to everyone who calls their office for information as this will an unwise use of their time and of the generous donations of our supporters. Instead, they have agreed to place an update on their website, which gives a little bit of information about the case and how it is being handled.

You can read the update from Cohen Davis here:

https://www.internetlawcentre.co.uk/the-case-of-frankie-rzucek

Next steps 

The latest cost estimation from our legal team is £75,000, which includes a cost estimation for the leading Barrister, the filing of the proceedings and the service of the pleadings in the case.

We just need to give this one final push, so we definitely have enough to secure this case.

Thank you so much for the continuance support

We are so grateful for the support we have been receiving. Many of our backers are individuals who really, have made a huge effort to contribute to our fight for justice, out of the very little they have. This is very touching and greatly appreciated by my family.

Please continue to support us by emailing friends asking them to support our case or by Tweeting or posting one post on Twitter or Facebook in support of our cause.

You can include this link for to donation page: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/justice-for-suffering-family 

Every donation is important because it helps see this case through and put an end to the online abuse for once and for all.

Thank you again. I will post further updates as matters continue to move forward.

Frankie