Wife of Taunton stabbing victim, fights for social media to change policy

By Ana Bottary

abottary@abc6.com

@anabottary

It has been almost a month since Rosemary Heath lost her husband George, while he tried to save a waitress in Bertuccis, during the horrific stabbings in Taunton. In her time of mourning she would log on to George’s Facebook page, to read his posts, share memories and respond to friends and family. But over the weekend facebook informed her she could no longer log in, and that the page was memorialized.
 
"It turns out anyone can do it. If you don’t have the legacy setting set up on Facebook, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a legacy setting on Facebook, than anyone can do this,"says Heath.

According to Facebook, in order to memorialize a page all you need to provide is the person’s name, approximate date of death, and optional proof of death, such as a link to an obituary. Memorialized accounts cannot be logged into to prevent  the account from getting hacked.
 
"the fact that anybody could do this to anybody out there, it makes you hurt. It takes away that chance of sharing those memories," Heath says.

As a result, Heath is asking for that policy to change through an online petition.
 
"I want it to go to Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook group to say, look what are you doing here? Why are you not taking into consideration the people who are grieving to the loss of a love one, and taking that away from them just because someone says the page should be memorialized," says Heath.

You can find that petition by clicking the following link: http://chn.ge/1t72386

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