New Westminster school board trustee behind fake Twitter account trolling people online

A New Westminster school board trustee has been revealed to be behind a Twitter account that was trolling community members. Dee Beattie was apparently tweeting under the fake account @AlfromNW / Allan Whitterstone for months. According to local parents, through the account, she sent messages not only to them, but to school board members and even the president of the BC Teachers’ Federation.

James Plett, a New Westminster parent, told CTV News he noticed the account began following him and his wife’s Twitter accounts after they attended a school board meeting about their daughter’s daycare being moved.

“Out of nowhere, some guy on Twitter just started attacking us for no reason,” he said. “We’d never heard of this guy. We’ve never seen this guy and we just started wondering, well who is he?”

 

Plett said the couple started looking into the account, monitoring its tweets. Eventually, they discovered a tweet Plett claimed showed the Tweeter’s location.

“It turns out there’s one school trustee that lived exactly at that address,” he said.

Plett said that address belonged to Beattie, who’s in her fifth year serving on the school board. Since the discovery, both the Whitterstone Twitter account and Beattie’s have been deleted.

“Honestly, I think it’s disgusting. I think that she hasn’t taken accountability. She said she had a role in the account, but she didn’t have a role in the account. She was the account,” Plett said. “She should not be collecting a single dime from the taxpayers that she assaulted online.”

CTV News spoke with Beattie and was told she provided a statement to local media, including the New West Anchor. In her statement to the Anchor, she admits to using an online fake account and apologizes to those she hurt. She goes on to say that she has health issues, including chronic pain and mental health issues that increasingly became worse.

Beattie said she is now taking a medical leave of absence from the school board.

In a statement to CTV News, the New Westminster school board said: "The Board is deeply disturbed by the conduct and the harm this has caused to individuals in our community and to public confidence in our District. This conduct is absolutely unacceptable for someone in public office and runs contrary to the District’s foundational values: collaboration, engagement, inclusion, innovation and integrity."

Laura Kwong, the chair of the District Parent Advisory Council in New Westminster, said the behaviour has impacted her perception of the school board.

“Trust has totally been broken,” she said. “When someone shows you who they are, you should believe them. It’s incredibly disappointing to see this from an elected official.”

The school board has a meeting planned Tuesday. Both Kwong and Plett would like to see a third-party investigation occur.

“We’re all members of a community here and when people set about to destroy community, to attack people, that does make where we live a nice place to be, or a better place to be,” Plett said.