No, these photos do not show a woman’s foot after her husband mistook it for a snake and hit it with a baseball bat

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 29, 2019 at 05:35
Updated on May 29, 2019 at 05:35
3 min read
By AFP Australia

Three photos have been shared hundreds of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter alongside a claim they show a woman’s injured foot after her husband attacked it with a baseball bat. The misleading posts claim the woman's husband mistook her snake print stockings for a real snake. The claim is false; the photo of the injured foot has circulated online since at least 2016 on a Vietnamese medical blog about a 36-year-old Vietnamese man who suffered wounds to his feet; the unrelated photos of a person wearing snake print stockings remained online in May 2019 in a product listing by an online retailer.

The photos were shared in this Facebook post on December 24, 2018.

They were shared more than 880 times after being uploaded to a Facebook page that has almost 50,000 followers called “Pakistani Community in Australia”.

The misleading post consists of two photos of a person wearing a pair of snake print stockings, and another photo of a bandaged, bleeding foot.

The caption of the post reads, in part: “Serious Post! Every women (sic) need to be careful when choosing and wearing stockings, even if they look like stylish.

“This woman wore this kind of stocking, and her husband peeked from the door grabbing a baseball bat, and beat her foot that he thought two huge snakes (sic).”

Below is a screenshot of the post:

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Comments left by some Facebook users on the misleading post suggested they believed it was genuine.

Below is a screenshot of some of the comments:

The same photos were shared on an Australia-based Facebook page here with a similar claim.

The images were also shared more than 200,000 times after being posted here with a similar claim by a Facebook group based in Italy.

The same photos were shared with a similar claim on Twitter here; and on Portuguese language websites here and here with a similar claim.

The claim is false; the photo of the injured foot has circulated online since at least 2016 on a Vietnamese medical blog about a 36-year-old Vietnamese man who suffered wounds to his feet.

A reverse image search on Google found the photo of the injured foot in this post published on a Vietnamese medical blog on January 17, 2016. The post contains graphic content.

Below is a screenshot of the photo on the blog post:

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The blog’s Vietnamese title translates to English as “Internship 2014” and “Forum of Internship Interns BV115”.

“BV115” refers to 115 People's Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. This is its official website.

A journalist in AFP’s Hanoi bureau analysed the post. The Vietnamese language blog post translates to English as:

“Title: Learning and practicing stitching wounds, plaster casting. Name of patient: Nguyen Thanh T. Age: 36. Sex: Male

“Reason for hospital admission: The patient was helping his family and a cutter machine fell on the instep of his left foot, which then started bleeding. He was admitted to the Orthopedics and Trauma department at 115 People's Hospital (Ho Chi Minh City). Wound assessment: The wound on left foot instep, 8-9 centimetres long, tendons and bones exposed.”

The two photos in the misleading post of a person wearing snake print stockings remained online in May 2019 in a product listing by an online retailer.

A reverse image search on Google for the two photos found them published by Amazon here.

Below are two screenshot comparisons of the stockings on the Amazon website (L) and the images used in the misleading post (R):

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