A friend of missing British teen Jay Slater has condemned the online trolling that she said has added to their “living nightmare”.
Rachel Hargreaves, 34, is the mother of the missing 19-year-old’s best friend Brad and has travelled out to Tenerife where Jay went missing on June 17.
Ms Hargreaves is assisting Jay’s mother Debbie Duncan as they search for the missing teenager after he failed to return to his accommodation while out on holiday.
But their search has been blighted, she said, by online trolling – including by one who impersonated her mother who died eight months ago.
She said the troll had set up a Facebook account in her mother’s name, using an old picture and had added her as a friend, also sending a message to Brad saying, “I miss you”.
“We’re living the worst nightmare you can live and this does not help,” she told the BBC.
“The picture of my mum is an old one but it was on my Facebook and somehow they have got their hands on it
“I’m a strong person and that affected me. Things don’t normally get to me.”
Ms Hargreaves has become a target for trolls after agreeing to run a Facebook group set up by the family, which now has more than 590,000 members.
She said many members have tried to help but others have been negative.
Despite the pushback, she has vowed to stay in Tenerife to assist Brad and Ms Duncan as they search for Jay, who she called a “lovely lad”.
She said: “You can’t put into words how you feel. I’m just here trying to support and be strong for her.
“The things she can’t do I am trying to do for her, mother-to-mother.
“We have become a lot closer friends since this.
“We’d always chatted about Jay and Brad, we were just caring mothers who wanted to make sure they were safe.”
Jay attended a music festival on June 16 in southern Tenerife but vanished following an attempt to walk back to his accommodation after missing a bus.
He called a friend the next morning to say he was “lost in the mountains”.
His family arrived the next day and search teams began in the area.
Ms Duncan revealed on Thursday that some of the £36,000 donated via a fundraiser would be withdrawn to support the mountain rescue teams and family travel expenses.
Search teams, co-ordinated by the Spanish police, the Guardia Civil, have since mounted a huge manhunt using helicopters, drones and search dogs to scour mountainous areas of the island, but are yet to find the teenager.
Foreign secretary Lord Cameron has said he is “desperately keen to find out what has happened”.
Source Agencies
