The endearing photo showed two children lying together on a cosy rug with a book – taken from behind to conceal their faces. Proudly posting it on social media was nothing out of the ordinary for content creator Lauryn Goodman. But she could never have imagined the bile it would attract.
She was devastated to discover that the snap had been doctored and posted on the notorious gossip website Tattle Life. The NSPCC logo had been pasted at the top of the photo, along with the children’s charity’s phone number.
Alongside a giggling emoji, the anonymous troll had written: ‘It’s one edit away from an NSPCC advert.’
It was part of an ongoing hate campaign against Lauryn, accusing her of not feeding her children properly and mistreating them.
She had fallen victim to this level of sustained bullying ever since the story broke of her having had two children with married England footballer Kyle Walker – a story that last year was never far from the front pages.
‘Someone took the picture and edited it to put the NSPCC logo on it,’ Lauryn, 32, told the Mail in an exclusive interview.
‘They said that Kairo and Kinara were being neglected and treated badly. They even said that I wasn’t feeding my children properly and there were just no repercussions. It was disgusting and they are so horrible about them.
‘I couldn’t eat, I felt sick and I was filled with anxiety. I got heart palpitations. I felt like I was having panic attacks.’
Lauryn said the abuse she received on Tattle Life caused her to suffer panic attacks
Lauren describes the slurs as the work of ‘keyboard warriors’ who flock to Tattle Life, a toxic website which has gripped 12 million unique users every month since it was founded eight years ago and became infamous for its savage attacks on influencers and celebrities. The site claims to allow ‘commentary and critiques’ of people who ‘choose to monetise their personal life’.
In reality, it is an unchecked breeding ground for bullying, ‘doxxing’ – where individuals’ private details such as addresses and telephone numbers are published online – and outright lies.
Members of the public are allowed to post anonymously about anyone they want – saying anything they like, no matter how damaging. The horror of it was too much for some, with many self-harming and suffering from mental health problems.
High-profile targets include Victoria and David Beckham, TV presenter Stacey Solomon, Love Island’s Molly-Mae Hague and Tamara Ecclestone and her husband Jay Rutland.
But you don’t need to be and an A-list celeb to find yourself picked apart on the site.
This week founder Sebastian Bond, who had remained anonymous since the launch of the site, was finally unmasked after a couple won a £300,000 libel payout over vile claims posted about them on Tattle Life.
The court heard how vegan blogger Bond, 42, went to some lengths to hide his identity and connection to the site. He used different names and disguised his operations behind businesses based in locations across the world. Tech entrepreneur Neil Sands and his wife Donna, who runs a popular clothing brand called Sylkie and is a fashion influencer with 26,000 Instagram followers, were awarded the damages for defamation and harassment after a court heard they were the target of a 45-page thread and were traumatised by the website for almost a decade.
Things got so bad for the couple, who live in County Antrim, that Donna was signed off work as she had ‘such paranoia that someone was going to break in and kill me, and my unborn baby’.
Lauryn says anonymous people on Tattle Life ‘called my children so many nasty, nasty things which I don’t ever want to say because it’s so disgusting’
Sebastian Bond, founder of Tattle Life
Lauryn says she formed an alliance with the couple, having met through an Instagram chat group called Tattle Unmasked, which tries to reveal the identity of anonymous posters.
It was through this community that Lauryn got to know Neil and Donna and, along with Jay Rutland, formed a WhatsApp group with the aim of trying to uncover the identity of the founder who had profited from the vicious trolling for so long.
Lauren says: ‘We did so much work, it was like something from a thriller movie. We were going from clues linked to businesses, Companies House, to addresses where Sebastian Bond previously lived, where he went to uni. We were just following loads of trails. We couldn’t believe we did it and it was amazing how it was coming together.’
It was at the High Court of Justice in Northern Ireland last week that reporting restrictions which prevented Bond being named were lifted.
‘We knew months before the court case,’ says Lauryn, ‘but we couldn’t say anything. We did put an AI picture of him on Instagram to play him at his own game. The image of him went on to my thread on Tattle but within seconds the bots removed all trace of him. We knew we had him then.’
Lauryn’s nightmare experience with Tattle Life began in 2020 when lockdown kicked in. She was pregnant with Kairo, now five, her oldest child with Kyle. He had been conceived while the Manchester City defender was on a ‘break’ from wife Annie Kilner. It started with contributors to Tattle telling abhorrent lies that she was an escort who was paid to go to Hong Kong to have sex.
Once her son was born in April of that year, and her relationship with Walker became headline news, the floodgates opened.
She says: ‘They have called my children so many nasty, nasty things which I don’t ever want to say because it’s so disgusting. They used terms for children born out of wedlock, horrible terms that you shouldn’t refer any child by.
‘They’re so innocent – they’re minors and it’s sick. I can’t understand why anyone would do this to children. They think they are funny with it but there is nothing funny about it, what have my children done to deserve this? Take away my part in the situation, what have they done? It’s a form of harassment.’
Unfortunately for Lauryn, who was last year rarely out of the headlines following her relationship with Kyle, things got worse.
Tattle Life users became so intent on trolling her that they phoned social services to say she wasn’t looking after Kairo and daughter Kinara properly.
‘I have never wanted to speak about this before,’ says Lauryn. ‘I was so embarrassed that people from Tattle were anonymously ringing social services. They say it on the website too, things like: “She’s going to be getting a call from social services…” and the next thing, I get one.
‘In fact, there have been two [calls from social services] to say that I don’t care for my children properly, which is just horrible and untrue.
‘They said stuff like I don’t feed them and when Kairo was a baby they said I was starving him. I mean, I was exclusively breast pumping to give him milk all hours. It was horrible, it was mean and it is totally unacceptable.’
Lauryn was also upset when Kinara’s name, which she had kept private appeared on Tattle Life.
‘There were so few people who knew her name. My daughter’s name was not public information. It was on no public record, her date of birth was not public, so nobody could find it so of course you start to wonder who is telling people these things. Inevitably, it caused trust issues for me. It makes me paranoid. It gave me anxiety and it changed me. I used to be outgoing but now I’m nervous and have lost my confidence.’
Then there was the stalking. ‘People would go on Tattle and say, “I saw Lauryn here” or “she goes to this coffee shop and maybe you’ll see her if you go there”,’ she says. ‘It’s weird and it is scary.’
Lauryn also says that she has had her medical records mentioned on the website. There have also been accusations on Tattle Life that she has taken drugs with comments such her being ‘on the snowflake’ or that she is ‘off her head on the gear’ – both terms for cocaine – though Lauryn is absolutely clear she has never taken drugs in her life.
Tattle Life users have also caused influencers and celebrities to lose work with brands. ‘They contact the companies and complain about people and then they get dropped and that means they lose money, this is affecting people’s livelihoods and it’s not fair,’ said Lauryn. ‘Brands shouldn’t be enabling and empowering these keyboard warriors they should stand strong.’
‘It has affected so, so many people, it even affected my family badly, every single member of it because it spreads out so far. It is extreme and unnecessary, but those saying it think they can get away with it because they think they are safe and their identities are hidden and nobody will ever find out who they are.’
Lauryn said: ‘I feel like it has impacted me in quite a lot of ways, not just defamation and libel issues but it has contributed to the circus and the narrative of the saga with Kyle.’
Lauryn is very fired up when I speak to her. In fact so enraged – and scarred – was she by Tattle Life that she chose to follow in her fellow WAG Coleen Rooney’s footsteps by doing her own Wagatha Christie work to uncover the identity of those posting vile accusations about her.
That’s when she joined Tattle Unmasked, where she met Neil and Donna.
Following their successful legal action, Lauryn is planning to follow suit. She is in conversation with lawyers about the next steps she will take but has very much been inspired by the couple and says it wouldn’t have been feasible without them, describing them as ‘heroes’.
She is also now in discussions with the Information Commissioner’s Office about how her personal data is being used and she is urging anyone who has been affected by Tattle Life to contact them and to log the complaint and open a complaint.
‘Then the regulators will have to look at it,’ says Lauryn. ‘I also have a case with the Metropolitan Police.’
‘They are keyboard warriors, they feel so safe behind it and that they have anonymity. They take it too far and they say things that they would never, ever say to you if they saw you and they feel safe enough to go down this dark path without realising the repercussions on other people.
‘I think people are blurring the lines. Yes, have an opinion that’s fine, that’s free speech but when you’re trolling in the masses, when you’re posting private details about people including addresses or people’s children, details a person hasn’t made public. There is medical data.
‘I had to go cold turkey and not look, it’s the only way you can survive that website. I think people have self-harmed, I have heard one has taken their own life.’
But she has a warning: ‘There people sign up with a made up name, they can make a fake account and they think they are safe to do that but they are going to find out. They don’t realise that the software is now around to find out those people and they will no longer be anonymous.’
Ultimately she is determined to have the website shut down – so that Kairo and Kinara, who turns three in August, will never have to see the awful comments made about them when they are older.
‘A lot of people have left Tattle because they are scared of being found out and the trolling is slowing down, there are still a few cocky ones on there. But there is no way I want my children to ever seen these horrid things written about them and that’s why I’m determined to put an end to Tattle Life for good. This is just the start.’
