Open letter to Martin Reed – re. treatment of Bencase

Several people in the Forum 3 chatroom have been talking almost obsessively about their ongoing attempts to encourage a well known chatter, Bencase, to commit suicide.

Bencase is known to have mental health issues and claims to be taking medication for bipolar disorder.

There has also been an enormous amount of abuse aimed at Bencase, based solely on his mental illness. This is offensive to anyone whose life, or family life, has been affected by mental illness, which is actually very common.

The justification given by these individuals for their bullying and abuse has been along the lines of:

“He deserves it by coming in here and talking about his mental health”
“He’s a fruit loop so deserves everything he gets”
“It would do the world a favour if he killed himself”

Bencase may or may not be a perfect individual, I don’t know. He may have rubbed people up the wrong way, or been rude or offensive. I’ve heard conflicting reports about him. But it’s worth noting that many people claim to have been friends with him for a long time but are also being intimidated and bullied for defending him, and are often too afraid to speak up when a number of regulars are holding their witch hunt in the room.

However, whatever he might have done wrong, absolutely nothing justifies the concerted efforts being made by a number of chatters to “push him over the edge and make him end it all”, as one of them said today.

If Bencase is a problem to anyone, they should simply ignore him.

This is bullying of the worst and most disturbing kind. There are approximately five “regulars” at the centre of this.

One “regular” in particular has been rallying the room to “stick together” and “work as a team” to try and “break him”.

She spoke for half an hour about what she called “Operation Overdose”. She said in no uncertain terms, that she was on a mission to make Bencase commit suicide. She said “if we work hard enough, we can get him to take enough of his loony pills to finish him off”, and “i know we can do this”.

These comments have now become sinister and vile in the extreme.

It is also deeply unpleasant to watch how other people in the room will jump on the bandwagon and join in with the bullying, even though they don’t know Bencase and have never heard of him before. They want to belong to the crowd and are prepared to say the most odious things to a mentally ill person in order to achieve that.

A certain guide who can be found in Forum 3 late most evenings/nights has witnessed all this bullying and to my sheer amazement has actually joined in with it. I’m not going to name names here, but if Martin Reed wishes to investigate or check logs, it won’t be at all difficult to identify the guide I’m talking about. (Hint – this is the same guide who says “lol i’ll pretend i never heard that mibs” when Man in Beds talks about his desire to put rubber tyres around the necks of black people and set them on fire).

This might be one big joke or form of entertainment to some people, but the line is being crossed. There was a case reported in the news where a man did commit suicide whilst using a chat room, and the police did actually trace and interview the people who had been in the room at the time.

So I ask people to think very carefully about what they’re saying, if not for Bencase’s sake then for their own sake.

I call upon Martin Reed to take decisive action instead of allowing guides to tolerate and join in with this behaviour. If no action is taken I will report this matter to Easily.co.uk, Parachat, and any other company affiliated with this website, as they would undoubtedly not want to be associated with a company that condoned this kind of activity.

Again, I reiterate that whatever Bencase has allegedly done wrong is besides the point. Nothing justifies the things that have been said to him. If you don’t like him, just ignore him.