Idaho professor falsely accused of student murders by TikTok psychic reveals fear for children's safety
The University of Idaho historian who successfully sued a Texas TikTok psychic who had accused her, without evidence, of involvement in the murders of four students there has revealed fears for her children's safety — including sleepless nights standing guard as they slept — and other consequences of the ordeal in a new op-ed.
Rebecca Scofield, 41, first became aware of Ashley Guillard's unfounded videos on Thanksgiving, less than two weeks after the murders. Court documents provide a raw account of what she went through.
"I went and laid in my son's bed because his bedroom is the closest to an entrance to our house," she testified at trial. "And I was so afraid for him, so I just sat there at the end of his bed all night and watched him."
Things got worse as time dragged on and Guillard posted more videos, she wrote Monday in a New York Times op-ed.
"Over the next several weeks, while I was grieving with the rest of my community, this TikTok influencer uploaded over a hundred videos declaring that I had committed a quadruple homicide," she wrote. "The videos got millions of views. I was overwhelmed with calls, messages, comments and emails, many of which were disturbing or threatening. And I could have been anyone."
She had trouble sleeping and found herself patrolling the hallway outside of her children's rooms at night instead. She stopped going to class and taught students remotely. While she hunkered down at home, she felt exposed there at the same time.
Guillard's claims continued even after Scofield's lawyers sent her a cease-and-desist order, after Moscow police publicly stated the professor was not a suspect — and even after police arrested Bryan Kohberger in connection with the crimes.
"I was not hit by a bus or punched in the face," Scofield wrote. "Yet I saw up close how the online world can come to feel more real than the physical one. Even after the actual murderer was arrested and convicted, the accusations against me continued. And even though these outrageous claims were made online by someone I had never met, they were amplified by unsuspecting viewers and algorithm-driven platforms, and the harm seeped into every aspect of my life."
Scofield is also warning that social media giants face little accountability while amplifying potentially defamatory or damaging claims.
"We can try to hold platforms accountable for the harmful content they spread," Scofield wrote. "A federal law, Section 230, protects online platforms from many defamation lawsuits, meaning that only individuals are liable for misinformation, even if a platform helped spread it. Proposals that would reform Section 230 range from adding exceptions for extreme cases to revoking immunity for social media companies altogether. If the companies making billions of dollars off these platforms won’t protect us, what other recourse do we have?"
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"We can sue," she added, and "we can also share our stories."
She did both, with a federal jury awarding her $10 million in her defamation lawsuit against Guillard, a 41-year-old from Houston who had repeatedly posted videos about Scofield online, claiming she'd directed the murders and was having an extramarital same-sex affair with one of the victims, while providing no evidence. Guillard has appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
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"I came to realize that all of us are responsible for the online world we inhabit, and all of us must fight its tendency to propagate lies," Scofield wrote.
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As part of her warning, she recounted that technological advances in communication throughout history have had huge impacts on the world, citing the effect of the printing press on Christianity and claiming that "the radio helped fuel the rise of fascism across the U.S. and Europe."
"Digital platforms rewrite our reality in a much more profound way," she wrote. "It takes a long time to uncover the truth through historical analysis, and even then, it’s often at best partial. Social media destroys that process. Even though many content creators hold themselves to high standards of research, they are not professionally beholden to official codes of conduct or review."
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Scofield and a spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
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Last year, Kohberger admitted to the murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. All four were University of Idaho undergraduate students. The three young women lived in a rental home off campus with two other roommates, and Chapin was spending the night over with Kernodle, his girlfriend.
All four were killed in a 4 a.m. home invasion stabbing on Nov. 13, 2022.
In July, Kohberger petitioned the court in an attempt to take back his plea. He's due to attend a virtual court hearing Thursday on a motion to have the judge taken off his case as part of that process.