Battle over YouTube clip of schizophrenic boy being bullied

José Martín Roldán has spent 46 years looking after his schizophrenic son, Román. Besides the physical demands, he did not imagine that he would have to look after him on the internet too.

But he has now taken YouTube to court after videos of his son being insulted and bullied in the street by an anonymous gang of kids appeared on the video-sharing site.

"A few months ago one of my sons told me that here were videos of Román ... being ridiculed by a group of boys," said José Martín. He says he initially contacted YouTube, asking them to remove the videos, and signed up to the website to add critical commentaries underneath the images. The 70-year-old pensioner then went to Wikipedia, where he found contact details for Spanish-language media in the US, and wrote to them one by one, asking for help.

Unfortunately this had the opposite effect than he intended. "From 10 people having seen it, there were 10,000," he said.

In June he went to the court in Móstoles in Madrid, where the family lives, and made a verbal petition that they eliminate the videos. Initially the videos ceased, but a few weeks ago another one appeared, this time uploaded by a different user. José and his family believe they could have been made on any one of the occasions that Román has fled the house and suffered a schizophrenic episode.

"I am not going to convert my house into a psychiatric ward, nor tie my son to the bed," says José, who adds that he and his wife are "not going to allow anyone to use my son for a laugh".

The case is now being investigated by the cybercrimes unit of the Civil Guard. A spokesman for Google España, which owns YouTube, told El País newspaper that the one video still remaining on the site "does not break the terms of use" but that anyone can ask for a video to be removed.

"The parents only have to fill in the privacy complaint form which we have sent to them, but they have not yet returned." However, he said that they would only hand over the personal information of the user who uploaded the video when presented with a court order.