The saga began last year when Julia Hartley-Brewer, a presenter on talkRADIO, shared a clip of Dr Julia Grace Paterson criticising the government’s messaging around restrictions to stop the spread of coronavirus.
Hartley-Brewer shared the clip on Twitter, adding: “In unrelated news, Dr Julia Patterson sells face masks at a huge profit on her website.”
Brewer has been vocally opposed to many measures brought in to prevent Covid-19 from spreading.
Dr Patterson founded a non-profit campaign group called EveryDoctor which advocates on behalf of the NHS, the people that work in the service and the patients that it serves.
At the time of the row, she took to Twitter and shared some of the abuse she suffered after Hartley-Brewer’s comments. She wrote: “Here’s a tiny example of the abuse I’ve received in the past 24 hours. High profile science-deniers/ anti-maskers tweet abuse about doctors and scientists, which directs their followers to troll us too. Julia Hartley-Brewer and others target doctors, and this is the result.”
Now she has written a blistering thread documenting the abuse she has faced since the allegations were posted by the TalkRadio presenter.
She wrote: “It’s a bit difficult talking about this, but I’ve had some space and time now so I feel able to. The inaccurate information shared about me by Julia Hartley-Brewer directed a huge, huge amount of online abuse in my direction. It was relentless, and it continues….”
“…I have young kids. It happened during the Christmas holidays. My team were on annual leave. It was frankly horrendous. No one should face online abuse because things which are not true are being spread about them by well-known journalists. We aren’t going to drop this…”
“…because I don’t want others facing the same treatment. For clarity, we sell masks. We are a non-profit. The EveryDoctor website is not ‘my website’, it is the organisation’s website. I do not sell anything for profit. We are a non-profit. In fact I do not even receive free…’
“…masks from EveryDoctor. I pay for every single one which I photograph. The personal, misogynistic, hate-filled, misled trolling I have absorbed as a result of this situation has been beyond belief. I am extremely fortunate to have a wonderful support network. If I didn’t…”
“…frankly I don’t know what state I would be in. Our Head of Legal has written to Julia Hartley-Brewer. I will update you at each step. If you feel able to support EveryDoctor, we would so appreciate that. We will continue to advocate for NHS staff and patients every day.”
She then asked for people to support Every Doctor.
Related: Reactions as Julia Hartley-Brewer says using only 7 BBC services ‘is not value for money’
