The Wardman Wire

CONFIDENTIAL:

NOT TO BE REDISTRIBUTED TO ANY PERSON

OR PUBLICLY POSTED

Reverend Norton:

I have visited your web page[1] which you brazenly have set up to carry on for the “cartoon church” blog site. As such, you appear to be dedicated to the destruction of my personal reputation and that of Saint Stephen the Great/Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust. I am absolutely appalled and devastated that a member of the clergy of the Church of England would engage in such inappropriate and defamatory behavior, by what you have written as well as by what you have posted and by encouraging others to do the same.

I am dumfounded that any Christian, especially a clergyman, honestly believes that this is consistent with his faith. You would know better than I, a layman, how many places defamation is spoken against in the Holy Bible.[2]

Re-publishing the material from “cartoon church” has nothing to do with what you call “free speech.” Instead, you are invading my privacy by putting my name on your webpage, and you are defaming me. You are also interfering with the Charitable Trust’s efforts to salvage what remains of the charitable business of the Christian bookshops with scorn.

Your libel of me and your invasion of my privacy have deeply hurt me. Because of your position as a clergyman, the pain of the words on your web page is greater.

This is not right and you have gone too far.

Your statements are false and I categorically deny them – both for me and SSG/SSGCT. Many of them are defamatory per se (e.g., “. . . incompetence and injustice of the people who have taken over the SPCK chain.”)

I reiterate: am a private individual and I value my privacy. I am not a public figure and you have no right to drag my name through the mire. I do not consent and object to you invading my personal privacy by maintaining web pages about me, SSG, SSGCT, ENC Management, my brother, my wife, or my family. I do not consent to you posting blogs or enabling and encouraging others to blog us on the internet. I do not consent to you defaming me to any other party or person by “sharing” your false allegations. At this point, even were you to remove my name from your web page, my personal identity would still be clear to a majority of readers.

Legal Demands

1. I hereby demand that you cease and desist from doing any of these things any more. I specifically demand that you deactivate your webpages, websites and/or blogsites which mention me, my brother, my family, SSG and/or SSGCT IMMEDIATELY. I also demand that you not post this email, paraphrase it or refer to it in any way.

2. I hereby demand that you issue to me a retraction and apology on your webpage stating substantially the following:

I have removed from my website all of the material about Mr. Mark Brewer and the Saint Stephen the Great Charitable Trust as I have determined that it unfairly violated the personal privacy of Mr. Brewer and because it was defamatory. I acknowledge that I did not have any factual basis for any of these defamatory statements and that this is the reason for this retraction and apology.

I sincerely apologize to Mr. Brewer for the hurt I have caused to him, his family and to Saint Stephen the Great. I urge my readers to refrain from any public postings on the internet about Mr. Brewer in respect of his privacy.

I also request and urge my readers to refrain from writing or saying anything about him, his family or Saint Stephen the Great which is or reasonably could be interpreted as false or defamatory.

3. I hereby demand that you contact all persons with whom you have communicated about me or the charity, sending them the above apology with a blind-copy to myself so that I know you have complied.

If you do meet the terms and conditions set forth above and if you fail to remove the defamatory material from your website by noon GMT July 25, 2008, I will seek an injunction against you and those with whom you have collaborated in your activities. I also will take legal action against you for damages for libel. In that event, I will also subpoena all records relating to the persons whom you have allowed to post defamatory material on your website in order to add them as defendants.

Please acknowledge your receipt of this correspondence and your intent to comply with this demand by reply email.

J. Mark Brewer