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3 days ago
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A survivor of the Manchester Arena attack is calling for greater legal protections from conspiracy theorists after a YouTuber with millions of viewers secretly filmed his family to try to prove they were “crisis actors”.
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve, now 22, were left with life-changing injuries by the blast, which killed 22 people and wounded hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert in May 2017.
They were the closest people to the suicide bomber to survive but Eve suffered a severe brain injury and Hibbert, 48, was paralysed when his spinal cord was severed by shrapnel.
The father and daughter were awarded £45,000 in damages in October after suing a former TV producer turned conspiracy theorist who claimed in online films that the attack was staged.
In videos viewed tens of thousands of times, Richard Hall described the Arena bomb as a “well-organised and well-planned fake terrorist incident involving over 100 enlisted participants or actors” and that it involved “fabricated deaths”.
Hall, a former engineer and TV producer, had also spread conspiracy theories about the murders of Jo Cox and Jill Dando, the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, the Salisbury poisonings and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
His YouTube channel, which was shut down in October 2022, had 84,000 followers and his videos had more than 16m views, the high court in London was told this year.
The judge, Mrs Justice Steyn, condemned Hall’s conduct as “oppressive, unacceptable and of sufficient gravity to sustain criminal liability” after hearing how the YouTuber had covertly filmed Eve and her mother in September 2019 after tracking down the teenager in an effort to try to prove she was a “crisis actor”.
In his first newspaper interview since the high court ruling in October, Hibbert said his family learned about the surveillance – in which Hall placed a covert recording device on his car’s dashboard, pointed at the family home – only two years later and that it had left them terrified and paranoid.
“I came home one day and Gabby [his wife] was in tears and said she was scared of being in the house,” he said, adding that it had left him afraid to be alone in public until recently.
“I was thinking: if anybody follows me or knows who I am, there’s nothing I can do. For me to say that and feel that … I realised it was actually affecting me more than I thought. It’s affecting our life, how we go about things.”
Hibbert is planning to campaign for a new criminal offence protecting victims of crime or tragedies from harassment by conspiracy theorists, which he wants to be known as Eve’s law after his daughter.
He also plans to establish a star chamber of pro-bono barristers who would represent these victims on a no-win, no-fee basis, as he said legal fees were preventing people from suing those hounding them online.
Hibbert said the legal bill from his case – which involved a four-day trial at the Royal Courts of Justice – came to almost £250,000, which his law firm is attempting to recoup from Hall.
“When we first had a conversation a couple of years ago my barrister said he was going to need £100,000 in an account to even look at this case. Very few, if any, could afford that,” he said. “Why should it be that only people with money can get justice? Eve’s law might also be access to justice.”
Hibbert, a former football agent, has published a book about surviving the Arena attack and raising more than £1m for charity after becoming the second paraplegic person to scale Kilimanjaro in 2022.
Despite two inquiries and a lengthy criminal investigation into the atrocity, he said his most difficult moment in court was being cross-examined by Hall’s barrister at the harassment trial in July.
“It’s probably one of the toughest things I’ve done in life, really,” he said. “I was sat there being made to feel guilty. I was there for three hours and he [the barrister] was saying I have a public profile so I should expect it … It was really hard.”
Steyn said in her ruling that Hall’s conduct had “alarmed and distressed” Hibbert and caused Eve “real, lasting and persistent anxiety, and enormous distress”. Hall has appealed against the verdict.
