British Twitter trolls jailed for abusing feminist campaigner

Two Twitter trolls were jailed on Friday for sending threatening messages to a feminist who campaigned for a woman to appear on a banknote.

Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, targeted Caroline Criado-Perez with rape threats and abuse after the Bank of England announced that Jane Austen would be featured on the £10 note.

Sorley, a university graduate who has 25 previous convictions, the majority of them for being drunk and disorderly, sent tweets to the campaigner which described her as a “worthless piece of crap”, told her to “go kill yourself”, and warned "rape is the last of your worries".

Nimmo, who is unemployed, told Miss Criado-Perez to "shut up bitch" and wrote "ya not that gd [good] looking to rape u be fine", followed by "I will find you (smiley face)", Westminster Magistrates' Court heard.

He also directed threats at Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, calling her a "dumb blonde bitch" and writing in sinister terms, "The things I cud do to u (smiley face)",.

Sentencing Sorley to 12 weeks in prison and Nimmo to eight weeks, Judge Howard Riddle said it was "hard to imagine more extreme threats”.

The judge noted that the abuse had had a “life-changing” effect on Miss Criado-Perez and that Miss Creasy had installed a panic button in her home.

He said of the tweets: "The fact that they were anonymous heightened the fear. The victims had no way of knowing how dangerous the people making the threats were, whether they had just come out of prison, or how to recognise and avoid them if they came across them in public."

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Threats of violence are beyond legitimate free speech