Fake News: Climber Did NOT Suffer Brutal Sexual Assault By Yeti-like Creature

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Climber Did NOT Suffer Brutal Sexual Assault By Yeti-like Creature

Was 28-year-old Jason Barclay sexually assaulted by a yeti in Kathmandu, Nepal? Nope, the story of the yeti rape was fake news invented by a satirical website with a reputation for making up stories about things that did not really happen.

This oneoriginated from an article published on April 19, 2018 by World News Daily Report titled "Nepal: Climber survives brutal sexual assault by Yeti-like creature" (archived here) which opened:

Kathmandu | A tourist expedition in the Himalayas turned to nightmare after an American tourist and two local guides were savagely attacked by a creature resembling a "hairy" and "giant" humanoid reports the Kathmandu Herald.
Jason Barclay, 28, was on a solo adventure across the Himalayas with his two local sherpas when he was attacked during the night by what he believed was a bear.

The creature lashed through his tent and started to shove the half-asleep man around, who managed to stay still despite his fear.

"I thought I was going to die, so I played dead," he told the Kathmandu Herald.

Users on social media who only saw this title, description and thumbnail might have confused the story for a real news article:

Nepal: Climber survives brutal sexual assault by Yeti-like creature

Kathmandu | A tourist expedition in the Himalayas turned to nightmare after an American tourist and two local guides were savagely attacked by a creature resembling a "hairy" and "giant" humanoid reports the Kathmandu Herald. Jason Barclay, 28, was on a solo adventure across the Himalayas with his

But the picture that went with the story is actually alpinist Matt Helliker:

Matt Helliker Alpinist - Interview

Matt, we hear you are back in the UK for two weeks, can you tell us where you are and what you're up to? I've been back in the UK to rock climb and to also do a series of lectures and to show my last film that I featured in "Citadel" Do you come back to the UK often or is the draw of the European mountains too much to resist?

The website World News Daily Report is a well known satire website specialized in posting hoaxes and made up stories. The disclaimer on their website is pretty clear about that even though you have to scroll all the way down the page to find it:

World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.

It is run by Janick Murray-Hall and Olivier Legault, who also run the satirical Journal de Mourréal, a satirical site spoofing the (real) Journal de Montéal. Very often their stories feature an image showing a random crazy mugshot found in a mugshot gallery on the internet or on a stock photo website superimposed over a background of flashing police lights or crime scene tape.

Articles from the site are frequently copied (sometimes even months or years later) by varous fake news websites that omit the satire disclaimer and present the information as real.

We wrote about worldnewsdailyreport.com before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  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

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion