A man who used TikTok videos and emails to harass lawyers in a Family Court case has been issued with an injunction.
The videos accused a barrister of “dishonesty and professional misconduct in very bald terms”, Deputy High Court Judge Aidan Eardley KC said in dismissing the attacks and agreeing the interim injunction against David Protheroe-Beynon.
In Kayleigh Thorne & Anor v David Protheroe-Beynon, heard at the Royal Courts of Justice, the judge said Mr Protheroe-Beynon was “embroiled” as a litigant in ongoing family proceedings and believes Kayleigh Thorne, solicitor with Venters, and Adele Nicola Rainsford, barrister instructed by them, have been unprofessional and dishonest in the case.
He had made complaints to regulators, issued civil proceedings, and filed contempt proceedings but none of these had resulted in any action. He had then threatened to “go public” and begun making accusations in TikTok videos.
The claimants’ main concern, the judge said, was “simply to make these attacks on them stop (whether those attacks are by direct communication or by publishing information about them to others) so that they can carry on with their lives without being subjected to alarm and distress”.
He also noted that the claimants were understandably concerned about the “reputational consequences” if “clearly defamatory” matters remained online or were repeated.
June Venters KC, for the claimants, told the court of multiple instances of harassment. These included a reposting a live chat in which Protheroe-Beynon said: “I am going to make life a great deal more difficult for [Ms Thorne]…That woman is going to be destroyed…a welfare check, really needs to be done on Ms. Thorne. She’s clearly very distressed and it’s going to get worse…”
In an email, she said, he wrote,“…Ms Thorne, you will find I can be vindictive, patient resourceful, and unforgiving,” and, in another, “I am going after all the professionals who have assisted…mainly through the court process but in some cases I will be going public about them”.
In an email to Venters’s practice manager, Ms Venters said he wrote: “…to date I have gone after Venters Solicitors in general and Kayleigh in particular and there’s nothing …can do to stop me. Nothing the police can do to stop me…I am going fucking ruin the pair of you, you child abusing psycho piece of crap!”
His TikTok videos, she said, included a to-camera attack on the firm Venters and Ms Venters herself, and another in which he accused the claimants of incompetence and dishonesty. He told Ms Rainsford in an email: “That TikTok video is out there naming you as a dishonest barrister.”
Mr Protheroe-Beynon told the court he admitted responsibility for all the emails and TikToks which, he said, were “much like online reviews that criticise a rogue builder”.
He said he was “sincerely worried” about the welfare of his children which, he said, was in jeopardy. He claimed he had “good grounds for believing that [Ms Thorne and Ms Rainford] have acted unprofessionally or dishonestly in the course of the Family Proceedings”, in which, he said, he had unsuccessfully tried to “promote settlement through mediation”.
The judge said that, although the injunction permitted Mr Protheroe-Beynon to make further complaints to regulators or the police, the judge had not seen any admissible evidence that could reasonably support such complaints, either against the claimants or against Ms Venters and her firm.
June Venters told Today’s Family Lawyer: “Approximately two years ago, David Protheroe-Beynon was a litigant in a private law case in Manchester, in which one of my solicitors, who I have trained, who’s been with me for more than seven years, and who then had been probably qualified for about 18 months, represented his former wife in children proceedings.
“From the moment that those proceedings began, [David Protheroe-Beynon] has utterly terrorised her. He has sent email after email after email. I feel that our professional body has let her down, and to a large extent, I think the court has let her down.”
She called for “greater support for lawyers” who are “facing this sort of harassment, which is utterly unacceptable.”
She added: “I want to say to the courts and to our professional bodies and to the police that we need protection. We are doing our job, which is an emotive, very difficult job, and we need protection from people who are making false allegations based on nothing other than that they don’t like the way the case has gone.”
