‘It’s David and Goliath’: how UK campaigners feel silenced by Slapps

Pressure is growing on government to act on legal threats designed to ‘harass and intimidate’ opponents

Verity Nevitt was just 21, a student living away from home for the first time, when she learned she and her twin sister, Lucy, were going to be sued in the high court. Someone knocked on the door of her London house share with a big bundle of papers and asked her to sign for them.

A year earlier, the sisters had reported a man to the police, accusing him of sexually assaulting Verity and then, after she had left the house, raping Lucy. When the case was dropped by police, they decided to name him on social media, in order to warn others. The man responded by suing them for misuse of private information, harassment and eventually defamation.