Hearts were warmed recently by the story of Autumn Mazzitelli, the woman who posted a Craigslist ad looking for a family to ‘adopt’ her and her son for Christmas so they wouldn’t have to spend the festive season alone.
While Autumn initially received an overwhelmingly positive response to her ad and was inundated with kind invitations however, things quickly turned sour for her.
In an interview with Buzzfeed.com, the mother-of-two revealed that she has been the target of online abuse and has been forced to take down the ad and her Facebook post as a result.
As it turns out, a lot of people were concerned over the ‘vulnerable’ position Autumn was putting herself and her son in, and they didn’t hold back when it came to chastising her via the ad's comment section.
“It turned into a crazy, painful thing. Something beautiful turned into something dark,” said Autumn, who initially posted the ad to get to know and bond with the locals in her new town.
Going into detail regarding the nastier messages she received under her ad, Autumn added: “I got so many people hating on me for being a ‘sh***y’ parent for putting my kids in danger…They say don’t read the comments section, but I’ve never had a comment section before.”
While she has been left understandably upset by these responses, Autumn insisted that she sticks by her original motivation for posting the ad: “I was just trying to make a point: That it’s so easy to find oneself lonely at Christmas and I didn’t want to be lonely…I was going to choose not to be lonely, other people could too.”
