About me: I'm an author and dramatist who, in the last ten years, has dedicated myself to helping to fund accurate, accountable journalism first through the Byline.com crowdfunding site and the Byline Festival, and now the successful investigative newspaper and news site Byline Times 

Summary On the weekend of 19 June this year I was hideously libeled by former UKIP leadership campaign manager Jay Beecher on the site Politicalite, edited by Jordan James (Jordan Kendall). 

Both had previously threatened Byline Times months before. The entirely fake allegation of child sexual abuse was published without the comments I had sent them,. A tweet with even worse commentary ("just the tip of the iceberg" was spread by Blue Tick account James Melville (with over Twitter 180,000 follower) and his editor at Country Squire Magazine, James Bembridge. Both also have a history of derogatory comments about me. 

The Legal Principles. I have instructed specialist defamation solicitors at Bindmans LLP.  I understand this is a slam dunk case of serious harm (what could be more distressing and damaging than an allegation of child sexual abuse?), but bringing the sources of this malicious libel to book is an expensive process, and there is no security that I could recover my own legal costs if it goes all the way to court and an inevitable victory.

The Wider Impact: But it's not only my reputation at stake. False allegations of sexual abuse have become the stock in trade of many right wing figures. People have to see the penalties for the politics of personal destruction and character assassination which also undermine the tragic and very real accounts of the many survivors of sexual abuse

The Costs: The first and not inexpensive phase of this legal case is to write letters to all four involved in this libel, and see if full apologies, costs and appropriate compensation can be achieved without going to court. We estimate this could be as high as £40k

Beyond that, if any of the four do not settle out of court we could be looking at a long process without guarantee that any of the four have assets enough to pay for the legal costs, in which case I will (regrettably) have to secure funding in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. 

Thank you: It has been a very dark time for myself, my friends and family, but the many messages of support from you all has been a ray of light. None of this crowdfunding can be accessed by myself, and can only be used by my lawyers at Bindmans. I am happy to provide a complete breakdown of how the money will be spent

Thanks so much for reading this far, and your kind support,

Peter