A mother who shares pictures of her disabled son in a blog is urging people on the internet to help after she discovered the spread of an abusive meme about him.

AliceAnn Meyer was horrified after she found an offensive image of her four-year-old Jameson as a pug had been liked and shared thousands of times on Facebook - with the social network initially refusing to take it down despite her complaints.

Jameson was born with Pfeiffer syndrome, a genetic condition that causes premature fusion of the skull plates, affecting the shape of the head and face. Meyer has been posting updates on her son's progress on her blog Jameson's Journey.

She is now fighting the online abuse by reporting every discriminatory image she finds - and is encouraging others to do the same.

In a powerful post entitled "This Is My Son Jameson, And No, You May Not Use His Photo", Meyer says she will not "sit idly by" as people degrade her child.

She details how major social networks have responded to her requests to remove the offensive images.

She praises both Twitter and Instagram for acting to take down the doctored pictures of her son, but attacks Facebook for its policy on dealing with such abuse.

Removed the offensive content within 20 minutes minutes of a claim being filed

In most cases, it took less than 24 hours to remove the memes

  • Meyer says she was initially told the doctored image of the little boy would not be removed as it doesn’t violate the network's "community standards"

  • She says the site later told her it had removed the meme - only to find it hadn't

  • Facebook told ITV News it is investigating the claims, and reminds users that it relies on people reporting concerns about content to them via the site's tools

An open letter to trolls

Meyer says that she will "never understand what compels a person to do such a thing" but says that she will do "everything in my power" to remove every shared meme.

She wrote an open letter to the people who would share or like such images: