Misogyny crowdfund: activists who lost ‘whore’ libel want damages paid by supporters

A former Occupy Justice activist Rachel Williams and Nationalist Party pundit Godfrey Leone Ganado are crowdfunding €3,600 after losing a libel filed against them by parliamentary secretary Rosianne Cutajar over a Facebook comment that called her a prostitute. 

The campaign is collecting €2,000 to cover their legal and court fees and €900 to cover the moral damages they are bound to pay. They are trying to collect €3,600 in total. 

“As you may well be aware, we have a number of costs incurred by the libel cases Rosianne Cutajar brought against us. We do not have any financial backing from rich businessmen or political parties. We are asking for your financial help to settle these costs,” they say in their pitch. 

The remaining funds after paying their libel cost, will be donated to domestic violence victims’ shelter Dar Merħba Bik. 

Cutajar won €800 in libel damages over the 2018 Facebook post, apart from legal costs. 

Williams had insisted that the allegation, posted by Leone Ganado on her Facebook wall, was made without her consent, but the court said that she had not made any effort to censor or delete it.  

Magistrate Rachel Montebello observed that Williams had also replied to some of the comments under the post. 

Cutajar is said to have once advertised herself on a website giovani.it under the name Nuxellina where she offered services as a hostess. “Effectively, as the plaintiff said, the site appears to be one with a principally educational scope and content, aimed at being used by Italian students of various educational levels,” the Court declared. 

The court said that the term ‘hostess’ as advertised did not mean call girl, pointing out that the term had a completely different meaning in Italian. 

Magistrate Montebello also weighed the fact that despite the negative comments made by others about Cutajar’s behaviour, this “did not mean that her honour was completely destroyed, as the defendant appears to have tried to argue.” 

The fact that the declarations were made without any tie to Cutajar’s public office, were degrading in nature and were published on a platform which was accessible and followed by a limited quantity of people were also factors taken into account in quantifying damages.