Christian Winthrop’s Friend Threatened To Kill People on Facebook
You may have read the article penned by Newport Patch Editor Olga Enger coming to Christian Winthrop’s defense after 11 days of deleting every mention on the publication that was critical of him. In that piece she mentioned a Facebook page that was created that discussed Winthrop’s arrest. Enger conveniently left out the following:
The page was created by a Portsmouth man whose name I am withholding for safety reasons—you will understand why in a bit. It was created on November 14 to discuss why the Newport Patch hadn’t covered the story yet and to boycott Winthrop’s publication the Newport Buzz and its current advertisers. It was named, Boycott Newport Buzz.
The page was quickly taken over by Winthrop supporters who engaged in victim blaming. But that wasn’t the worst of it. A man by the name of Robert Oliveira who stated that he is a close friend of Winthrop’s (and alluded to having shared a troubled past with Winthrop) threatened to kill two men who simply shared or commented on the news clipping from the Newport Daily News mentioning Winthrop’s arrest. As of writing this article Olga Enger currently lists Robert Oliveira as a friend on Facebook.
On his personal blog, Oliveira claims to suffer from a mental illness; he writes:
“I suffer from a condition known as Bi-Polar 1. Although I have probably been this way since birth, I was only diagnosed in October 2012 after a very ugly incident.”
After discovering Robert Oliveira had been arrested at least 27 times in Rhode Island for crimes ranging from obscene phone calls to you guessed it, felony assault—I contacted the Boycott Newport Buzz page owner and cautioned him not to engage with Oliveira and instead contact his local police department. He promptly took down the page after my word of caution.
Prior to that incident a separate member of the community, John Florez, CEO of Drupal Connect threatened to sue the page owner for listing all the current advertisers on Newport Buzz with the intent to boycott them. The page owner caved to Florez’s legal threat and removed the list of Newport Buzz’s current advertisers.
I promised the page owner that I would re-publish the list as John Florez’s legal threats were unfounded.
Here are the current advertisers on Newport Buzz as of November 20, 2013 (publicly accessible).
One Pelham East
Norey’s
Drupal Connect
NPT Sportswear
Deborah Winthrop Lingerie
Newport RI Deals
Bridge Liquors
Bistro 162
Mixx 99.3
Kevin O. Hagan
You may reach the author of this article at:brandon.a.partridge+medium@gmail.com
