Fake News: Woman Did NOT Set Pedophile Muslim Man on Fire After Catching Him Rape 7-Yr-Old Daughter

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Woman Did NOT Set Pedophile Muslim Man on Fire After Catching Him Rape 7-Yr-Old Daughter

Did 40-year-old Tatanysha Hedman of Renton, Washington set a pedophile muslim man on fire for raping her daughter? And did this happen recently? No, that's not true: Macedonian fake news websites are reposting news from 2014 about a woman who set fire to her husband for molesting his stepdaughter and claim without any evidence the man is muslim. It is just a cheap ploy to get clicks by abusing people's emotions.

A recent example of the story comes from an article published by the website cvikasdrv.com on August 19, 2018 titled "BREAKING: Woman Sets Pedophile Muslim Man on Fire After Catching Him Rape 7-Yr-Old Daughter - cvikasdrv.com" (archived here) which opened:

A woman has been arrested for dousing her husband with gasoline and setting him on fire after she caught him raping her 7-year-old daughter. 40-year-old Tatanysha Hedman of Renton, Washington, said she wanted to burn her pedophile husband alive because "shooting him was too nice" .According to Renton Police, Vincent Phillips, 52, was soaked in highly flammable fuel after he fell asleep in bed next to his wife.

Investigators confirmed that he was then set on fire whilst he was sleeping.Philips then fled the apartment and managed to drive his car down the street whilst still ablaze to a Skyway convenience store screaming I'm on fire!

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail, leading them to think it was recent news because of the "Breaking" and the publication date:

BREAKING: Woman Sets Pedophile Muslim Man on Fire After Catching Him Rape 7-Yr-Old Daughter - cvikasdrv.com

A woman has been arrested for dousing her husband with gasoline and setting him on fire after she caught him

Here are two articles from 2014 and 2015 about what actually happened. You can see most of the hoax article has been copy pasted but the part about the man being a muslim was added to the headline and different, unrelated pictures were selected.

Wife sets husband on fire in bed

A MAN who was allegedly set on fire by his wife after she accused him of molesting his young stepdaughter, is now facing sex crime charges. Police allege Tatanysha Hedman, 40, doused her husband in petrol while he was sleeping before setting him on fire at their apartment in Renton, Washington state, in the US.

Police: Man set on fire by wife now faces sex crime charges

RENTON, Wash. - The man who was badly burned when his wife allegedly set him on fire is now facing sex crime charges. Renton police earlier said Vincent Phillips, 52, had been doused in gasoline July 17 while he slept in bed by his wife, Tatanysha Hedman.

At least one of the pictures of burning men illustrating the story is from 2005 and shows a Romanian man protesting:

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | Day in pictures

Some of the most striking images from around the world on 11 July 2005.

The exact same story also appeared on notorious fake news website Now8News in 2017 with the misleading photographs and without mentioning the religion of the man:

BREAKING: Woman Sets Husband on Fire for Molesting Her 7-Year-Old Daughter

A woman is in custody after setting her husband on fire for allegedly molesting her 7-year-old daughter. According to police, Tatanysha Hedman, 40, poured gasoline on her husband Vincent Phillips, 52, as he slept. At that point, she allegedly set him on fire.

At the time Snopes checked the story too and found that most of the details were accurate except for the photos:

FACT CHECK: Woman Sets Her Husband on Fire for Raping Her 7-Year-Old Daughter

A woman set her husband on fire for molesting their daughter. A woman set her husband on fire in 2014 for molesting their daughter. The photographs typically associated with this story depict neither the incident nor the persons involved in it.

However the addition of the word "Muslim" in the headline clearly makes this fake news, as is pretending the story just happened recently.

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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