Hereford dad feared going out after false TikTok video

A father who was falsely implicated on TikTok in a child sexual abuse case says it left him fearful of going out in public.

Andy Bridgewater, from Hereford, had to take time off work because of the stress and labelled the social media giant “disgusting” after it falsely used a photo of him and his daughter in an unrelated news story about the sexual abuse of a seven-year-old child.

“It had such disgusting headlines that implicated me being the culprit, which was just disgusting,” Bridgewater said.

A TikTok spokesperson said: “We understand how distressing this has been for the family involved, and the content and account in question were removed last year for breaking our rules.”

“More than 99% of the violative content we remove is taken down before it’s reported to us, and we continue to strengthen how we enforce our rules so we can protect our community and their TikTok experience,” the spokesperson added.

Bridgewater said his wife had made him aware of the post, which was made by an account called Fuji Flash.

“A friend of my wife’s contacted another mutual friend saying she’d seen an online post on TikTok regarding myself and my daughter, or at least our image,” he said.

“My wife came home and told me to sit down because I was going to be really cross and she showed me this TikTok post.”

Bridgewater said his friends, family and anyone else he could get to help tried to contact TikTok to remove the post, which was uploaded about three or four months ago.

“I tried to do it numerous times and we made so many comments on there saying this wasn’t true and each time we were blocked by TikTok because apparently it doesn’t violate their community guidelines,” he recalled.

“We found that shocking. I contacted the original poster and they completely ignored me as well.”

The video was then removed by TikTok 36 hours after it was originally posted, but Bridgewater said he has endured “tough times since”.

“I’ve been walking down the street thinking someone could have seen it and put two and two together and take out their own justice,” he said.

“I’ve been off work with stress, it’s been a really difficult time. On the last look before we managed to get it taken down it had about a million views and 500,000 shares.”

The dad said he had since written to the social media company three times imploring them to review its procedures and processes.

“Everything I have sent has been completely ignored, no response from TikTok at all, which I find quite disgusting,” he said.

“I just want acknowledgment, an apology maybe and for them to look at their processes so this can’t happen to anyone else.”