Jay Slater’s mum Debbie Duncan has opened up on how ‘tragedy trolling’ made her life hell, and admitted that they have ‘never stopped’ with their tirade against her because there is no punishment for social media users.
The mother-of-two joined Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley on the sofa on This Morning on Thursday to open up about the messages she’s received online as she promoted her campaign for Jay’s Law – designed to hold social media companies accountable.
Debbie, 57, detailed some of the cruel online abuse that pushed her to ‘the brink of a nervous breakdown’ following Jay’s death in Tenerife in 2024, at the age of 19.
Jay’s disappearance in June 2024 sparked a massive manhunt across Tenerife but also a torrent of conspiracy theories and trolls who made unevidenced claims about what had happened to him, even abusing his relatives and friends.
Conspiracy theorists were quick to make false claims such as that his disappearance was a ‘revenge attack’ for his past behaviour and even questioned his mother’s own behaviour asking why she wasn’t visibly more upset.
Jay’s body was discovered four weeks after he disappeared in a remote area near Masca – but even after the inquest in 2025 that found he’d died on June 17, 2024, with injuries on his body consistent with a ‘heavy fall from height’, online sleuths continued to put forward fabricated claims about the case.
Jay Slater’s mum Debbie Duncan has opened up on how ‘tragedy trolling’ made her life hell, and admitted that they have ‘never stopped’ with their tirade against her because there is no punishment for social media users
The mother-of-two joined Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley on the sofa on This Morning on Thursday to open up about the messages she’s received online as she promoted her campaign for Jay’s Law
Home Office pathologist Dr Richard Shepherd said his post-mortem examination gave the cause of death as head injuries, and Jay’s body showed no evidence of restraint or assault – but it didn’t stop the messages.
Debbie told Ben and Cat: ‘It’s just never ended, two years on almost, and they just keep coming – it’s going round in circles, the comments about, “He was involved in the mafia and drug dealing”, and then it gets really personal.
‘[Trolls have been] calling his family, calling me [saying] “they’re drug dealers… he had a bad upbringing”, it just got really personal.
‘They don’t know us, they don’t know our family, they don’t know Jay but yet they just judge… and the conspiracies started almost immediately.’
Debbie touched on social media users hitting out against a GoFundMe page that was set up during the search for Jay – which topped more than £70,000 in donations.
At the time, she thanked all the well-wishes and revealed the money had been used to help the family stay in Tenerife during the search, support the teams who were ‘tirelessly searching for Jay’, and give him the ‘send off he deserved’.
‘Then the GoFundMe was set up which caused a lot of… and people, where there’s money concerned, so many families rely on GoFundMe’s now, I’m eternally grateful for all the help and support and the donations,’ Debbie continued.
‘We were transparent with the people at GoFundMe, they know what the money was used for but there will probably be a video out later today, “Oh, there’s Debbie Duncan again sat on the sofa talking about Jay and how much is she getting paid?”
Debbie told Ben and Cat: ‘It’s just never ended, two years on almost, and they just keep coming – it’s going round in circles’
‘But I’m sat on this sofa to get across the trolling and the awful side to social media.’
Asked by Cat if the online abuse had ever stopped, Debbie simply replied: ‘No.’
Opening up on her campaign for Jay’s Law, she continued: ‘We started the government petition at the end of last year, we’ve got over 13,000 signatures, the government responded, we have been down to Parliament three or four times.
‘[The law is] to make the big tech companies take more responsibility on what is actually put on their platforms, at the minute, it’s just lawless, they’re given this platform to say what they want.
‘The damage it is causing to not just our family, there’s a lot of other families that have gone through it, but we want to try and fight to put a stop to tragedy trolling, because that is what it is.’
She concluded as Ben asked how she and the family were ‘coping’ with Jay’s loss amidst the social media storm: ‘It just feels like time’s stood still, it’s very raw still.
‘What goes online has affected us as a family, and as a mother, there is no pain like losing a child but this is why I’m spurred on to help future families with this online hell.’
Last year, Debbie hit back at ‘disgusting’ online trolls after the family were bombarded with over 30million videos speculating about the case.
She first revealed she was calling for a law change to tackle the spread of misinformation and online abuse during the investigation into a missing persons case back in October 2025.
Debbie, 57, detailed some of the cruel online abuse that pushed her to ‘the brink of a nervous breakdown’ following Jay’s death in Tenerife in 2024, at the age of 19
In the first days after his disappearance, the heartbroken mother revealed she was immediately subjected to harassment over the phone and online.
She said last year: ‘Well at the beginning I didn’t look online and I was contacting Lucy [Jay’s friend who was on holiday with him]. I didn’t even think of checking who would have known it would have blown up.
‘Me and Zac [Jay’s brother] walked out of the airport and I got a WhatsApp message saying “kiss your son goodbye he owes us money”. I was ringing the number back but no one answered.’
Mrs Duncan continued to receive similar messages after her phone was printed on a missing person’s poster for Jay.
On top of this, a Facebook group set up by concerned family and friends gained traction online and soon became rife with speculation about the case.
‘A friend who’d flown out, Jay’s friend Brad’s mum, came out and set up a the page appealing for information,’ Ms Duncan said.
‘And then that was bombarded with all kinds of conspiracy theories videos of people saying is that a body and there were voices saying he said he wasn’t going to be stabbed.
‘Footage of Jay in the club and that got put out all over social media and then there was a video from the festival of his friends that got out saying he’d dropped a bag and it was full of drugs.
In the first days after his disappearance, the heartbroken mother revealed she was immediately subjected to harassment over the phone and online
‘And you’re like what is going on, you’re going down all these rabbit holes as well.’
It sparked Debbie to work with her local MP, Sarah Smith, to put forward a law change to tackle the spread of misinformation and online abuse during the investigation into a missing persons case.
Social media companies have previously stated they would remove misinformation that was likely to contribute to the risk of imminent physical harm or interference.
Last September, Debbie fought back tears as she revealed this morning that callous online trolls accused her of murdering her own son after he went missing in Tenerife.
She described how, while she and Jay’s loved ones were left ‘desperate’ for any lead, online trolls were making despicable claims accusing her of killing her own son – despite her being in the UK at the time of his disappearance.
‘They just kind of sensationalised it all online. I even got accused of murdering my own child at some point – we were all accused of different things,’ she told BBC Breakfast.
‘Jay’s friends, other family members, dragged into this whole made-up story. It was unbelievable really.
‘All this misinformation – we didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t real. When we found Jay, it just blew up even more. To this day, it’s still going on.’
Last September, Debbie fought back tears as she revealed this morning that callous online trolls accused her of murdering her own son after he went missing in Tenerife
Opening up ahead of a Channel 4 documentary looking at Jay’s disappearance, Debbie said she suffered a breakdown due to the vile theories and comments being propagated online.
‘You’ve got a family who’ve been through the most awful experience, they’ve lost their son and they’re being trolled,’ she said.
‘It just evolved – you couldn’t keep up with what was happening online. And what is still happening. It’s happening right now – it’s just horrendous.
‘It’s not ok at all, the things that the family have been accused of – murdering Jay, being part of a huge conspiracy for money, his friends have been accused of killing him. It was difficult to even select a few to include in the film.’
The documentary release coincided with her calls for tighter laws to stop so-called ‘armchair detectives’ from spreading misinformation online in sensitive cases.
She wants to see the introduction of ‘Jay’s law’, which would clamp down on those spreading falsehoods about missing people online, and has the backing of her local Labour MP Sarah Smith.
Hyndburn MP Ms Smith said: ‘It is entirely wrong that people can continue to speculate, with no end date, about what’s happened in these incredibly tragic circumstances, with no consideration of how that is impacting on those that have lost a loved one.’
She added: ‘These people are moving from family to family causing them an absolute living hell’.
Debbie said of the online trolling: ‘These people are moving from family to family causing them an absolute living hell’
Jay went missing during his first holiday without his parents, after partying at the NRG music festival and Papagayo nightclub in Playa de Las Americas.
After the event died down, he got into a car with two men he’d met on the holiday and drove to their Airbnb in the village of Masca, about 20 miles away.
After leaving the property, he phoned his friend Lucy Law saying he was lost in the mountains and his other friend Bradley Geoghegan to tell them he was trekking home after missing a bus.
When he failed to return to his accommodation he was reported missing.
Before long, dozens of conspiracy theories about Jay’s whereabouts were posted online.
Some of the theories claimed that he had been kidnapped by drug dealers and murdered in the mountains after losing a bag of drugs, while others claimed he had staged his own death or been killed by relatives.
According to Ms Duncan, some conspiracy theorists even asked whether the right body had been buried after his funeral.
‘When the facts were out there people didn’t want to believe the truth,’ she said.
Ms Duncan continued: ‘It was hard to understand their motivation. We were just a desperate family and then a grieving family when we found Jay.
‘We didn’t feel like there was any sympathy from these people, they were just sensationalising it all online.’
The impact of her son’s loss has been profound. Speaking to the Mirror in recent days, Ms Duncan told how she has left her job as a finance assistant at a local school and has received private counselling sessions.
She still hasn’t unpacked Jay’s case from Tenerife, heartbreakingly admitting that she often opens it up, just to smell his clothes, before closing it back up again.
Jay’s family hope to finally put the conspiracy theories to bed by speaking out ahead of a Candour Productions documentary for Channel 4 – The Disappearance of Jay Slater – which airs on Sunday, September 28 at 9pm.
Ms Duncan, together with Jay’s father, Warren, 59, and older brother, Zak, 25, gave TV producers unprecedented access to Jay’s story by sharing highly personal home footage, as well as coverage from inside Jay’s funeral.
Cameras were even allowed into his post-mortem.
Warren hopes that by showing the t-shirt and trainers Jay wore the night he died, it will put an end to the cruel conspiracy theories that their son is still alive.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1 and ITVX.
