An Alliance councillor has revealed he was accused of being a paedophile after homophobic trolling during last month's local government election campaign.
John Hyland (32), who is gay, represents Alliance on Mid and East Antrim Borough Council.
He has spoken publicly for the first time about what he says was a campaign of abuse directly targeted at him due to his sexuality.
In one incident, he was told a fake social media profile had been created pretending to be him which implied he was a paedophile.
Mr Hyland said that the trolling was so bad that at one point he considered quitting the campaign.
Mr Hyland, who was born in Liverpool but now lives in Co Antrim, explained: “It was in the middle of April, I had actually just come back from canvassing when I got a phone call from a party whip. They had told me a fake Twitter profile had been discovered which was using my name and images.”
The fake profile had replicated Mr Hyland’s entire page, including his Twitter bio, to mislead viewers into thinking the account was legitimate and represented the councillor’s views.
When he visited the profile, he found tweets coming from the page which implied he was a paedophile.
“All the tweets, which were posted within two hours of me finding out about the account, were implying I like to hang around Ballymena Academy in the bushes to look at schoolboys.
“It wasn’t nice. At that moment, I wanted to throw the towel in," he told The Belfast Telegraph.
“You put yourself forward for elections because you want to make things better, and to have this kind of targeted attack can make you think it’s not worth it. If you’re attacking my politics with your politics, fair enough. But not the person."
Mr Hyland, who was returned in the Ballymena district electoral area, said he immediately reported the profile to Twitter.
“It was taken down relatively quickly, which I was really impressed with, and then I reported it to the PSNI,” he said.
The PSNI visited Mr Hyland within hours to speak to him but he said he decided not to proceed with the investigation having been informed it would take some time.
He said the incident will not deter his desire to go further in politics.
“Since it’s happened, I’ve got hindsight. It did get to me, I was highly stressed, but I did get elected with an increased vote for Alliance, so despite the extremity, it didn’t do a lot,” he added. “I’ve had people email me saying they were happy to see me returned. My background is LGBT activism, so I’m not going to stop.”
A spokesperson for the Alliance Party condemned the abuse.
A PSNI spokesperson confirmed a report was made on April 19, and Mr Hyland was given the appropriate advice and guidance.
