Former footballer Joey Barton convicted for 'grossly offensive' X posts
Former Premier League player Joey Barton was found guilty on Friday of posting grossly offensive messages on social media targeting British broadcaster Jeremy Vine and football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko.
A jury at Liverpool Crown Court in north west England ruled that Barton, aged 43, had stepped over the boundary from free speech into criminal acts with six posts on X.
However, Barton, who represented clubs such as Manchester City and Marseille before entering football management, was acquitted on six other charges of sending grossly offensive electronic communications meant to cause distress or anxiety from January to March 2024.
After a televised FA Cup match in January 2024 between Crystal Palace and Everton, he compared Ward and Aluko in an X post to the "Fred and Rose West of football commentary".
Barton, who gained one England cap as a substitute, later edited a photograph by overlaying the faces of the two women onto images of two of Britain's most infamous serial killers.
He also posted that Aluko, a former England women's international, belonged in the "Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot category" because she had "murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of football fans' ears".
The jury cleared him of the dictator comparison and the West analogy but deemed the edited image grossly offensive.
Barton was additionally convicted for a post about Aluko, who is black, suggesting she was appointed solely as a diversity hire.
The former midfielder, boasting 2.6 million followers on X, responded to Vine with an offensive term implying a sexual interest in children, after the TV and radio presenter questioned if Barton suffered from a "brain injury".
He further asked Vine: "Have you been on Epstein Island? Are you going to be on these flight logs? Might as well own up now because I'd phone the police if I saw you near a primary school on ya bike."
Barton was found guilty regarding the Epstein reference, alluding to the late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and also convicted on other tweets concerning Vine.
He was released on bail pending sentencing on December 8.