What happened to Joey Barton? Ex-footballer gets suspended prison sentence over ‘offensive’ social media posts

Former footballer Joey Barton has received a six-month tutelar sentence, which is suspended for 18 months, due to a series of offensive posts made on social media between January and March 2024.

Barton, aged 43, was convicted last month at Liverpool crown court on six counts of sending a grossly offensive electronic communication with the intent to cause distress or anxiety, specifically for posts aimed at football pundits Lucy Ward and Eni Aluko, as well as broadcaster Jeremy Vine.

Barton, 43, is required to fulfill 200 hours of community service without compensation and to cover prosecution expenses amounting to £23,419.

Restraint orders lasting two years have been imposed on each of his victims, prohibiting any mention of them on social media or any broadcasting platform

While sentencing Barton on Monday, Judge Andrew Menary KC told the former England international that “robust debate, satire, mockery and even crude language may fall within permissible free speech. But when posts deliberately target individuals with vilifying comparisons to serial killers or false insinuations of paedophilia, designed to humiliate and distress, they forfeit their protection,” The Guardian reported.

“As the jury concluded, your offences exemplify behaviour that is beyond this limit - amounting to a sustained campaign of online abuse that was not mere commentary but targeted, extreme and deliberately harmful.”

Barton was acquitted of six additional charges related to sending a highly offensive electronic communication with the intention of causing distress or anxiety during the period from January to March 2024.

After a televised FA Cup match in January 2024 featuring Crystal Palace and Everton, he compared Ward and Aluko in a post on X to the “Fred and Rose West of football commentary”.

He proceeded to overlay the faces of the two women onto an image of the notorious serial killers.

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In his tweet, Barton further mentioned that Aluko belonged in the “Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot category” as she had “murdered hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of football fans' ears”.

Jurors determined that he was not guilty regarding the comparison between Stalin and Pol Pot, as well as the analogy involving the Wests. However, they concluded that the superimposed image was extremely offensive.

The former player for Manchester City, Newcastle United, and Marseille - who is currently a social commentator with 2.7 million followers on X - is reported to have implied that Vine had a sexual attraction to children after the TV and radio presenter sent a message questioning whether Barton had suffered a “brain injury.”

Simon Csoka KC, who represented Barton, stated that the ex-Manchester City midfielder had come to understand “the damage words can do” and expressed regret throughout the trial. Upon exiting the court, Barton spoked to media and said, “If I could turn back the clock I would. I never meant to hurt anyone. It was a joke that got out of hand.”

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