The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Stella Creasy

Twitter rape troll gets 18 months for 'campaign of hatred' against MP Stella Creasy

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

September 29, 2014 | 4 min read

A Bristol-based Twitter troll who bombarded a prominent female Labour MP with sexist and threatening abuse has been jailed for 18 weeks.

Stella Creasy led the campaign to get more women on money

Delivery driver Peter Nunn, 33, was today (Monday 29 September) jailed for retweeting “menacing” posts threatening to rape Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow.

The prosecution branded Nunn’s tweets as a “campaign of hatred" after Nunn started abusing the MP last July after she backed a successful bid to get Jane Austen on the British £10 banknote - a campaign started by feminist Caroline Criado-Perez who received similar abuse.

Nunn retweeted a series of vile messages threatening to rape and drown the "witch" MP. One tweet read: “If you can't threaten to rape a celebrity, what is the point in having them?”

During the trial, it emerged that Creasy regularly received similar threats from Twitter users but that Nunn used multiple accounts to conduct his attacks.

District judge Elizabeth Roscoe found Nunn guilty of digitally communicating indecent, obscene or menacing messages at City of London magistrates court.

He will now face 18 weeks in jail and a restraining order banning him from contacting Creasy or Criado-Perez.

Judge Roscoe said: "You added considerably to Creasy’s fear, this was a serious matter and it was persistent. I found your opinions egocentric. There was no real concern about what was happening to others, it was all about you. You wanted to grab a bit of the centre stage.”

The absent Creasy said in a victim impact statement: “I have had a panic button installed in my home. Members of my family were shocked and very upset.”

As a result of the backlash facing the two women during the campaign, Twitter came under pressure to install an abuse button into the site.

However, as the sentence was announced Creasy already recieved critical tweets from Twitter users.

The Labour MP for Walthamstow has nearly 50,000 followers on the social network and is a prominent user, racking up 426,000 tweets since joining in 2008.

Online trolling looks to be a growing problem area of UK law, just last week a Scottish man was jailed for 18 months for supporting Isis in a series of racist tweets calling for Kurds and Shia Muslims to "die like the Jews.

Stella Creasy

More from Stella Creasy

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +