the substance of the actual allegations that were brought against spone is that she was sending harassing messages to parents, children and to coach. she admitted to sending some of those messages, but denied sending other messages. she was doing that anonymously either from a burner number or from random accounts. she gets convicted of that specifically. but then when interviewed by the op's journalist she denies sending any kind of messages at all.
Spone may not manipulate videos and images, but she definitely collects them. Still, she says she never sent them. “The charges were that she directly sent messages to the minors,” Birch adds. “That never happened. That’s the point.”
But did she send messages to the gym and the parents? There is a long pause. “No,” Spone eventually says.
I’m surprised to hear her say this, given Birch told the Washington Post Spone messaged the parents out of concern for what their daughters had put online. When I point this out, there’s another long pause. “If I said that, I said it,” Birch says, with a shrug. “It is what it is.”
Even if Spone is guilty of sending the five messages, she is innocent of the claims that made her notorious. Sending anonymous and unwelcome text messages is not the same as digitally manipulating images of minors.
in my read of the article a nasty busybody harasses people, happens in this kind of communities all the time, but this time the whole thing gets caught in a national witch hunt. the witch hunt is awful, but it lets the nasty busybody play victim across the board.