Online Malicious Communication

[Keepitlegal]

I am presently going through divorce proceedings, the husband of my wife’s friend has named me on Facebook accusing me of emotional and physiological abuse towards my wife and calls me ‘delusional’ along with other derogatory statements.
I reported it to the police, he has been interviewed for making an online malicious communication, he admits posting the message (I took a screen shot of it before he took it down), but doesn’t admit to it being malicious or aimed at causing me harm.
I’m disabled and am a long term sufferer of depression and anxiety, he is aware of my mental condition, I have spoken to my mental health nurse who advised I contact the police and also my GP has increased my dosage to the maximum per day of Fluoxetine (Prozac) this is to calm me down and he has also doubled my daily dose of Amitriptyline to try and help me sleep.
The police have said although he admits to making the post, they cannot offer him a caution because he doesn’t admit it was made to cause me any distress, the police have also said it could have a detrimental effect with his job as he will have to declare having a police caution. I get the feeling the police don’t want to act on my complaint because it’s trivial and it could mean he may lose his job, I feel they are taking into account what could happen to him if he receives a caution, rather than applying the law to protect myself.
My question is, what is the actual law he has broken?
I think it is making a malicious communication, if that’s correct then surely the fact that he admits making the post, he is admitting guilt, even though he denies it was made to cause me the maximum amount of grief.
TIA
Keepitlegal

[YorkshireMan]

Some thoughts that might help....

Divorce doesn't just affect the two individuals, it affects family and friends around them too. Some of those family and friends will be more adult in the way they approach the situation with the two individuals than others. Here, we have someone who *thinks* its adult to take sides and use social media to express their opinion, and you'd be surprised how many people will take a very dim view of that sort of behaviour.

I suspect that having to explain himself to the Police and admit that the person he is having a go at is disabled will have left him feeling very uncomfortable and exposed.

Certain types of offence are difficult to prove beyond reasonable doubt, and that is what the justice system demands in criminal cases. If there is even the slightest doubt, the defendant gets the benefit of it. In this case, the Police are not dealing with as clear-cut an act of wrongdoing as (say) stealing something - they are having to balance such considerations as people's opinions/perceptions and the right to free speech which we all have and that includes making comments that might cause offence to people. In a case like this, people can and often do claim they were just expressing their opinion and didn't realise/intend to actually cause distress or harm with their comments the first time they do something - and it might even be true in some cases, though perhaps not in yours and I can understand why you feel aggrieved if he knew the situation.

Assuming the Police don't take any further action on this first occasion and he just gets a talking-to over his behaviour, you can still take some positives from an upsetting experience:

1. He might have expected you to just have a go back at him online or do nothing, so you might find that formal action has had more of an effect on him than you think especially if he hasn't been in bother before
2. He may well have taken some flak behind the scenes from those close to him for doing something so dumb as to potentially get himself in bother
3. If he is foolish enough to do anything again, he has now lost his defense of claiming he is unaware he is causing distress, leading to a higher probability of action next time - so it was important you logged it and made your position known to the Police
4. Many a political/celebrity career has gone down the pan from an ill advised post on social media captured before it was taken down, so he's unlikely to forget that he was caught out in a similar way