Fortress SCARS – Supporting Scam Victims Free Speech

In an era where the very concept of truth is under siege, the freedom to speak, to share, and to expose wrongdoing has become the most critical battleground for recovery and justice. For organizations like the SCARS Institute, this is not an abstract philosophical debate; it is a daily, existential struggle. The alarming trend of governments, particularly in the European Union and the United Kingdom, to criminalize speech under the guise of protecting citizens is a direct threat to the mission of victim advocacy. This legislative overreach, often framed as combating “harmful” or “offensive” content, creates a perilous environment where the powerful can silence the vulnerable and where the exposure of crime itself can be redefined as a criminal act. It is precisely this chilling climate that compelled us to create our own private community, a sovereign space where truth can be pursued without fear.

The core of our mission is to educate and strengthen scam victims, and a central part of that education is showing them the weapons used against them. In some cases, this can involve displaying the stolen photographs and fake identities that scammers wield to inflict their emotional and financial damage. We believe that to fight an enemy, you must be able to see them and understand them. Yet, this fundamental act of transparency has already put us in the crosshairs of foreign governments. We have received threats of criminal action from prosecutors in nations like Slovenia and the Czech Republic, which argued that displaying these stolen images, used by criminals to deceive their citizens and people worldwide, was itself a violation of privacy. Their position, in essence, was to protect the anonymity of the crime, not the victim.

Our response was unequivocal: we told them to pound sand and reported them to the FBI for extortion. We will not be intimidated by legal threats from governments that seem more interested in shielding the mechanics of deception than in helping its victims. This is not a hypothetical danger; it is a present and active one. When a state can threaten an advocacy organization for exposing the tools of a crime, it has crossed a line from governance into tyranny. It creates a world where the only safe speech is sanctioned speech, and where the voices of survivors are silenced by legal intimidation.

The UK is now so bad that we have a blanket recommendation that no scam victim participate in any group based in the UK.

This is why our private community is more than a support group; it is a sanctuary. It is a digital fortress built to defend the fundamental right to speak truth to power, whether that power is a lone scammer or a foreign state. Within this space, we can continue our work without the threat of a prosecutor in another country deciding that our educational materials constitute a crime. We can share the raw, unfiltered realities of scams, display the evidence of manipulation, and provide victims with the clear-eyed knowledge they need to heal and protect themselves. The fight for free speech is the fight for the victim’s right to their own story. We refuse to operate in a world where that story can only be told if it is approved by the very institutions that fail to protect them.

Prof. Tim McGuinness, Ph.D.
December 2025