PA MediaThe football pundit targeted by ex Premier League footballer Joey Barton said he “thrives on hurting people” in her first interview after he was sentenced.
Barton posted a doctored image on X showing ITV pundits and former England internationals Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward superimposed over the serial killers Fred and Rose West.
He was found guilty of posting grossly offensive electronic communications about the two women, as well as broadcaster Jeremy Vine, and handed a suspended prison sentence at Liverpool Crown Court.
Speaking on Newsnight, Aluko said the sentence “sent a huge message” that “if you bully people online you will be held criminally accountable”.
Newsnight host Nick Watt quoted Barton’s words from court that he “never intended to hurt anyone” and that the posts were part of “a joke, but it got out of hand”.
Ms Aluko replied: “I don’t believe that he never meant to hurt anybody. I think Joey Barton thrives on hurting people.
“Actually, there was evidence in this trial where he had multiple opportunities to stop what he was doing.”
PA Media“He absolutely intended to get the highest amount of engagement that he needed to get, to promote a podcast and to go viral with his content.
“And it backfired on him, and he’s been held criminally accountable for what he thought he was going to get away with.”
Prosecutors had argued Barton, 43, had “crossed the line between free speech and a crime” with six posts on X, formerly Twitter.
They involved falsely suggesting Vine was a child sex offender – including a post calling on his two million followers to call the police if they saw the presenter near a primary school.
After a televised FA Cup tie in January 2024 between Crystal Palace and Everton he likened Ward and Aluko to the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary” before posting the edited photograph.
In another post about Aluko, Barton said: “Only there to tick boxes. DEI is a load of sh**. Affirmative action. All off the back of the BLM/George Floyd nonsense.”
Ms Aluko said she was particularly happy Barton had been convicted over posts “attacking my race and my gender”.
‘Not tolerated’
“Unfortunately in the UK, we’ve seen that kind of rhetoric and that kind of language being used against me as a slur, and against other black women who work in the public eye as a slur”, she said.
“Now people need to understand that it, you know, it is not something that’s going to be tolerated in the law.
“It’s racially aggravated, it’s racially targeted, and it’s not acceptable, and you can be held criminally liable.”
At Liverpool Crown Court on Monday, Judge Andrew Menary KC, sentencing, told Barton: “Robust debate, satire, mockery and even crude language may fall within permissible free speech.
“But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection.
“As the jury concluded, your offences exemplify behaviour that is beyond this limit – amounting to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful.”
Barton must also complete 200 hours of unpaid work in the community and pay prosecution costs of £23,419.
Two-year restraining orders were issued against each of his victims which includes publishing any reference to them on any social media platform or broadcast medium.