An outraged mum has slammed Instagram for removing photos of her son, who has a facial deformity, from the platform for “not following community guidelines”.
Harry Beswick, 12, has Goldenhar syndrome, which means he has no left eye, eye socket, nostril or left ear.
His mum Charlie often posts photo of him and his twin brother Oliver to their Instagram called Our Altered Life, which boasts over 12,000 followers.
However, the two times she’s uploaded a photo of Harry not wearing his prosthetic eye, they’ve both been removed. This means that not only has someone reported the photo as offensive, but Instagram has agreed and taken the photo down.
Rather than sitting idly by the second time, Charlie took to Twitter to complain about Instagram’s decision and people were appalled, re-tweeting her more than 46,000 times.
“This time, I put in on Twitter and the support has been incredible. IG have now restored the photograph but not apologised or explained why my child’s face was deemed to be inappropriate for the platform.”
Sadly, trolls are all too common on Our Altered Life’s page.
“We do get trolls and I’m quite thick skinned, I do a lot of policing on Instagram.
“I get in there first for negative comments. I’m very hot on the comments – I delete or report anything really quickly.
“You get people telling me I should kill him with fire, he’s an abomination, a monster, freak, alien,” she added.
“People asking if they could put their bodily parts on different parts of my son’s face, which I find extremely offensive.”
When it became apparent that someone had reported her beautiful boy’s face, Charlie was furious.
“I realise that Harry looks different and that people are entitled to their opinion on him and his face, but I am incredibly proud of him,” she said.
“If people don’t want to look at Harry then they don’t need to follow me, can unfollow me or scroll past.
“To say that a child’s face is not fit for the public to see disgusts me. I was hurt and angry to say the least.”
Luckily, Harry has kept clear from the cruel comments.
“Thankfully Harry is oblivious,” she told Now To Love.
“As well as Goldenhar syndrome, Harry has autism, significant learning delay and is non-verbal. This means that he is unaffected by these things but makes me even more passionate to protect him and be his voice.
“I won’t always be here for my son – one day I will die and leave him without my support, so I feel it’s my duty and privilege to fight for him now.
Instagram has now re-uploaded the picture, saying it was removed in error, and a spokeswoman said: “We mistakenly removed the photo, but quickly restored it as soon as the mistake was brought to our attention.
“We have apologised to the family.”
But Charlie says they did not explain why it had been removed in the first place, nor did they apologise.
Follow Charlie’s very real and vulnerable blog which documents her life with Harry and Oliver at www.ouralteredlife.com.
