sto­ries by DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A busi­ness­man from cen­tral Trinidad has ob­tained an in­junc­tion against a so­cial me­dia page, which pub­lish­es posts about the al­leged in­fi­deli­ty and abu­sive be­hav­iour of men.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that last Fri­day, High Court Judge Mar­garet Mo­hammed grant­ed the in­junc­tion against the ad­min­is­tra­tors of the “Is This Your Man? – T&T and the Caribbean” page to the man, whose name was with­held based on the na­ture of the case.

In his court fil­ings, the man, who op­er­ates a busi­ness that pro­vides me­chan­ic ser­vices to com­pa­nies in the oil and gas sec­tor, saw a post re­lat­ed to him on the page on Oc­to­ber 8.

The post, writ­ten by a woman who was al­leged­ly in a re­la­tion­ship with the man, claimed that he was a ho­mo­sex­u­al. She al­leged that dur­ing their re­la­tion­ship, he re­quest­ed that she ap­ply a skin-light­en­ing cream to his but­tocks and put her fin­ger in his anus.

She al­so claimed that he bor­rowed $15,000 from her and was phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive dur­ing their re­la­tion­ship.

The man’s lawyers Joseph Sookoo and Kami­ni Ram­raj claimed that all the al­le­ga­tions were not true ex­cept for one.

“Save for the al­le­ga­tions that the claimant has told peo­ple that he pre­tend­ed to be ho­mo­sex­u­al to es­cape the re­la­tion­ship, the ma­te­r­i­al parts of the pub­li­ca­tion are false,” they said.

They de­nied that their client was phys­i­cal­ly abu­sive as they re­ferred to an in­ci­dent in which the woman at­tacked him with a din­ner fork and at­tached pho­tographs of his in­juries and a po­lice re­port.

They claimed that their client’s busi­ness was im­pact­ed by the post.

“His clients and busi­ness part­ners have been con­tact­ing him and ex­press­ing var­i­ous opin­ions which have af­fect­ed the busi­ness re­la­tion­ships and jeop­ar­dised com­pa­ny con­tracts which he re­lies on,” they said.

While his lawyers ad­mit­ted that the ad­min­is­tra­tors of the page re­fused to re­veal the iden­ti­ty of the au­thor of the post, they iden­ti­fied a woman, who their client sus­pect­ed to be re­spon­si­ble.

They claimed that she was up­set when he end­ed their re­la­tion­ship and she threat­ened to “bring him and his com­pa­ny down”.

The man’s lawyers not­ed that when they con­tact­ed the ad­min­is­tra­tors to raise con­cerns over the po­ten­tial­ly defam­a­to­ry na­ture of the post, they were ig­nored and ridiculed with their mes­sages be­ing post­ed on the page.

“The ap­pli­cant took all the nec­es­sary and/or pos­si­ble le­gal routes to stop the de­fen­dant from de­fam­ing him, his fam­i­ly, and busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing but not lim­it­ed to pre-ac­tion let­ters and mes­sages to Face­book to re­move the con­tents. How­ev­er, the de­fen­dants still per­sist­ed to de­fame the ap­pli­cant,” they said.

“Fur­ther, the de­fen­dants con­tin­ue to en­cour­age per­sons to com­ment and ridicule the ap­pli­cant with the stat­ed in­ten­tion of caus­ing harm to the claimant,” they added.

They not­ed that they were un­able to de­ter­mine the phys­i­cal lo­ca­tion of the ad­min­is­tra­tors but point­ed out that they were able to con­tact them via Face­book.

As part of her de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Mo­hammed grant­ed the man’s lawyers per­mis­sion to serve the le­gal pro­ceed­ings elec­tron­i­cal­ly.