A medical secretary has claimed her Facebook account was hacked after it was used to post false information claiming that a photograph of an ill boy on the floor at Leeds General Infirmary was staged for political purposes.
The woman denied posting the allegation that four-year-old Jack Willment-Barrâs mother placed him on the floor specifically to take the picture which became symbolic of the NHSâs troubles after it appeared on the front page of Mondayâs Daily Mirror.
âI was hacked. I am not a nurse and I certainly donât know anyone in Leeds,â said the woman, whose name the Guardian is withholding because she says she has received death threats. âIâve had to delete everything as I have had death threats to myself and my children.â
The original viral post on the medical secretaryâs Facebook account said âI am a nurse myselfâ and cited a âgood friend of mineâ at Leeds General.
Four-year-old Jack Willment-Barr is taken to his GP with suspected pneumonia. The GP calls an ambulance and Jack arrives in A&E, where he is initially given a bed and oxygen.
Early: Jackâs bed is requisitioned for another patient and he is moved into a treatment room with a chair and no bed. When he asks to sleep, his mother Sarah makes a pile of coats for him to lie on.
8.21pm: The Mirror publishes Sarah Willimentâs photos of Jack, under the headline âLittle boy with suspected pneumonia forced to sleep on hospital floor due to lack of bedsâ. The chief of medicine at Leeds General apologises to the family.
12.42pm:Â ITV reporter Joe Pike tries to show Boris Johnson the picture of Willment-Barr. Johnson initially declines to look, then pockets the reporterâs phone.
Before 8pm:Â A medical secretary based in Worthing says her Facebook account was hacked when she accepted a friend request from someone she didnât know. Whether it is hacked or not, whoever controls the account posts a claim that a âa good friend of mine is a senior nursing sister at Leedsâ who saw the Willment-Barr pictures being staged. The claim rapidly goes viral.
8.08pm: The âsenior nursing sisterâ claim is reposted to Twitter for the first time.
8.43pm: Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson retweets the âsenior nursing sisterâ claim for the first time.
Morning: The medical secretary deletes her Facebook account.
9:47am: The medical secretary tells the Guardian the âsenior nursing sisterâ story was posted by a hacker. She says she has received death threats and is feeling suicidal as a result of it going viral. She does not report the hack to the police.
2.46pm: Boris Johnson drives a union jack-covered JCB through a wall with the word GRIDLOCK written on it.
It claimed the boy in the photo âwas in fact put there by his mother who then took photos on her mobile phone and then uploaded it to media outletsâ. The post dismissed the pictures of the ill boy as âanother Momentum propaganda storyâ, despite the fact the hospital had already apologised for his treatment.
She said she had tried to report the hack of her Facebook account to the advice service Action Fraud, although this claim could not be verified.
Claims that the photo was staged spread rapidly across social media and messaging services on Monday night, potentially reaching millions of people after being amplified by Conservative politicians, celebrities and some journalists.
The row over Jackâs treatment has become a central part of the election campaign, with Boris Johnson being criticised for repeatedly refusing to look at the photograph he was shown by a journalist during an interview on Monday.
Despite the claim that the photo was staged having been acknowledged as false, it has continued to spread on both Facebook and Twitter, largely through individual low-follower accounts cutting and pasting the original text to share with their friends.
One version, posted by a man who claims to work for the British armyâs intelligence corps, has received 2,000 shares on Facebook; another, from a person saying they were a former soldier, has received a further 500.
The same claim was shared on Twitter, where it was spread by much more significant accounts. The Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson retweeted screenshots of the Facebook page to her followers twice, telling them âI presume this is genuineâ, and adding later that the photo was â100% fakedâ. Her posts have received thousands of retweets between them.
According to the researcher Marc Owen Jones, Pearson is âperhaps the most influential proponent of the faked floor theoryâ, although a tweet from the former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen sent to Piers Morgan may have been seen by more people as a one-off.
While many of the users who initially posted the claims to Twitter shared it with identical wording, there is little indication that the false narrative is being artificially boosted by automated accounts.
Twitter metadata shows the vast majority of the tweets were posted through the social networkâs website or smartphone apps, and the accounts sharing them overwhelmingly appear to be those of real people with an interest in politics.
Despite claims of a staged photo, Leeds General Infirmary has confirmed that Jack did suffer due to an exceptionally busy week.
âOur hospitals are extremely busy at the moment and we are very sorry that Jackâs family had a long wait in our emergency department,â said Dr Yvette Oade, the chief medical officer at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust.
âWe are extremely sorry that there were only chairs available in the treatment room, and no bed. This falls below our usual high standards, and for this we would like to sincerely apologise to Jack and his family.â
Gloss