Joey Barton has broken his silence after he was handed a suspended sentence for social media posts about broadcaster Jeremy Vine and TV football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko.
The former Newcastle and Manchester City midfielder, 43, was found guilty by a jury at Liverpool Crown Court of sending grossly offensive electronic communications with intent to cause distress or anxiety.
Barton compared female pundits Ward and Aluko to serial killer couple Fred and Rose West and went on to superimpose the faces of the two women onto a photograph of the serial murderers.
He also described former England international Aluko, 38, as being in the "Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot category", suggesting that she had "murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of football fans' ears".
Advert
After broadcaster Jeremy Vine defended the pair, Barton called him a slang term for a pedophile and said he would call the police if he saw him cycling near a primary school.
Last month, jurors accepted the prosecution's argument that Barton, from Huyton in Merseyside, had "crossed the line between free speech and a crime".
Barton was found guilty of six charges relating to social media posts about Ward, Aluko and Vine, and not guilty of six.
At Liverpool Crown Court on Monday, Judge Andrew Menary KC sentenced Barton to six months in custody, suspended for 18 months. The former midfielder must also complete 200 hours of unpaid work in the community and pay prosecution costs of £23,419.
Sentencing, the Honorary Recorder of Liverpool, Judge Menary KC 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."
As well as the above, 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.
Giving evidence, Barton said he believed he was the victim of a "political prosecution" and denied his aim was "to get clicks and promote himself".
Joey Barton posts on social media after being given suspended sentence for offensive posts
Taking to X on Thursday morning (December 11), Barton released a statement.
"My appeal is now formally underway," he wrote. "I reject this conviction, and the questions it raises about free expression reach far beyond me.
"I’ve stood by that principle my whole life, and I won’t step away from it now. But I’ll respect the legal process now in motion.
"I’m confident this will be put right. Thank you to everyone who has stood up and spoken out in good faith."
He added: "When the appeal is complete, I’ll speak openly and in full."
After leaving court on Monday, Barton said: "If I could turn back the clock I would. I never meant to hurt anyone. It was a joke that got out of hand. Nobody wants to go to jail."
Topics: Joey Barton, Premier League
Jack Kenmare