Schilling takes on cybertrolls

You don’t like him because he’s opinionated. Or because of his politics. Or because of his business acumen. Or because he pitched against your favorite team.

Say what you want about him. He couldn’t care less.

Say what you want about his daughter, though, and you’ve got a fight on your hands.

Former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling tweeted last week his pride that his daughter, Gabby, had been accepted to Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, where she will pitch for the softball team.

What he got back were some expected messages of congratulations. What he didn’t expect was the flood of disgusting, vile, vulgar, contemptible, disgusting messages in which rape and sexual assault were a common theme.

So, Schilling did what many fathers would do. He fought back.

At least two of the Twitter trolls are paying the price. Sean MacDonald, a graduate of Montclair State University in New Jersey, had been working since January as a part-time ticket seller for — ready for this — the New York Yankees. He was fired Monday.

“We have zero tolerance for anything like this,” said Jason Zillo, the Yankees’ executive director of communications and media relations. “We’ve terminated him.”

Adam Nagel is a student at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. He has been suspended pending a conduct review by the school.

Schilling is taking legal action against some of the trolls.

“I’ve already started in some cases,” Schilling said Tuesday by phone from his Medfield home.

“She’s a minor, and the one thing that is moving at light speed is the laws with regard to minors and sex on the Internet.

“And these idiots are — people are asking me if I feel bad. Well, I’d feel bad if my daughter killed herself. And if something happened to these guys, I’d feel bad. But I didn’t do anything. They did.”

What they did and wrote should shock the senses of any person who has an ounce of knowing what’s right and wrong. Then again, maybe we shouldn’t be shocked. Schilling titled his blog post, “The world we live in … Man has it changed.”

And he’s right about that. The online world is not the world most of us grew up in. Screen names give a false fearlessness to some people — in this case it was almost all young men.

Yes, times have changed. Language is more lax. Curse words are more commonplace. But have we lowered the bar so low that some people think these kinds of online posts are acceptable?

Many women who have ventured into the sometimes-treacherous landscape of social media know firsthand how ugly it can be. Especially if people can respond under the guise of anonymity.

Post a picture of yourself and you’re either too pretty or not pretty enough, too fat, too skinny, too old, too young, too something that someone somewhere doesn’t like. And they’re going to let you know it. Sometimes in the most reprehensible wording possible. Post an opinion or a thought and some people are going to let you know what you can do with them.

But why?

“I think that most of these people are little boys, mentally,” Schilling said. “So you don’t expect them to act and react like normal human adults.”

He’s not far off.

“The answer is a little bit complicated and counterintuitive,” said Dr. Emily Rothman, an associate professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health who studies sexual violence.

“What I would say first is there’s no one right answer. I don’t know these individuals. Who knows what’s going on with each one of them? There could be a different explanation for each one of them as to why they would do something like this because there are a lot of factors that go into it. So, anyone who tells you, ‘Oh, it boils down to something simple. They all (do the same thing).’’ Whatever that one thing is, it’s not right.

“Because when people behave sexually aggressively it could be for any combination of reasons because there’s multiple factors that can go into it. They run the gamut. What makes some behave sexually aggressively boils down to formative experiences that they may have had, adverse experiences in childhood, or how you’re raised can be a part of it. It can also have to do with their own innate psychology or biology. In other words, there could be mental health issues.

“For other people — and this is where I focus or I tend to do a lot of my work — is that social norms or perceived peer support for that kind of behavior encourages you to do it. So, if you live in a society that gives you messages that it’s OK to treat women this way and it’s OK to say things like that, everybody does it, it’s not that weird or bad. That certainly will increase the risk that someone will act on their impulses to do just that. And the final thing is not having alternative outlets for positive social behavior, which is a complicated way of saying in the absence of something positive and healthy to do with their masculinity they do something negative.”

Is that just a long way of saying boys will be boys?

“My daughter didn’t deserve this,” said Schilling, who also has three sons. “Nobody’s daughter deserves this, no woman. And that’s the other thing out of this that I really, really hope resonates with people, is that I told my daughter there is no circumstance or situation ever in your life where anyone is allowed to talk to you like this or treat you. Never. My sons knew that, but I tell the same things to them. There is no place on earth where you should ever talk to anybody like this, much less a woman.”

So, what can we, as a society, do about it? Before it happens, to prevent it from happening?

“I think we do live in a society that has not given consistently strong, discouraging messages about the disrespectful treatment of women and girls,” Rothman said. “It falls to all of us to start giving consistent messages to young men and boys and frankly all people that all people deserve to be treated with courtesy, dignity and respect.”

Some of the trolls have paid a price and may still pay a higher price on the legal side. One has lost a job. What will happen when they apply for jobs in the future? A quick online search will show exactly what they wrote. Will it matter? I’m sure there are employers who won’t want to employ them whether it’s because they don’t want the PR fallout or they don’t want men with such misogynistic tendencies working for them. But, I’m also sure there are others who won’t hold it against them.

“What would make a big difference is if they were held accountable by law enforcement, not just by Curt Schilling,” Rothman said. “If they had a criminal record, now we’re talking about something that could be an impediment, over and above damaging their reputation.”

Rothman is involved with a program called “Coaching Boys Into Men” that attempts to teach college coaches how to be positive role models for male athletes. She hopes Schilling will stay involved in this issue.

Schilling who, with his wife, Shonda, has been active in programs supporting ALS, autism and skin cancer research and has been a strong advocate for veterans.

“There are parents out there who don’t have kids because of (online attacks). They lost their kids because of this,” he said. “If they need someone to help, absolutely. I have done and said what I’ve done. I don’t regret it, and I never will. And I’ll be involved, if someone wants me to be involved, absolutely.”

Gabby is doing well, Schilling said, dealing with the aftermath of the Internet explosion.

If there is a silver lining to such an ugly event, perhaps it is that this will be the beginning of the end, the turning of the tide. We can only hope.

“There can’t be a maybe. We have to,” Schilling said. “If you ignore this, it’ll grow, more and more people will do it. You’re not going to stop them all, but I promise you if our kids knew the Internet laws like they knew the seatbelt law, I don’t think any of these guys would have typed any of this, because you’ve got guys who just lost a $140,000 education in 140 characters.”

Maureen Mullen may be reached at mmullen@itemlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MaureenAMullen.