Two jailed over abusive tweets

Two people who pleaded guilty to sending abusive messages to a feminist campaigner have been sentenced to jail.

Earlier this month, Isabella Sorley, 23, of Newcastle, and John Nimmo, 25, of South Shields, pleaded guilty to sending messages that were “menacing in character” to Caroline Criado-Perez.

After Criado-Perez successfully campaigned to have a woman pictured on a UK banknote, her Twitter feed was inundated with abusive messages. She described the nature and content of the threats made to her to New Statesman earlier this month.

In a statement posted via Twitter, Criado-Perez said she didn’t attend the sentencing hearing because she didn’t feel she could “cope with being in court with them”.

“I feel immensely relieved that the judge clearly has understood the severity of the impact this abuse has had on me,” she added. “The damages that have been awarded to me will be going to charity.”

The abuse against Criado-Perez led to calls for Twitter to improve its procedures for dealing with such situations, but the social network was forced to roll back its first try after complaints that the changes actually made things worse.

Others have since called for Twitter to do more to protect users from abuse via the site. This week, former footballer Stan Collymore called for an “algorithm” to keep racism off the site, after he faced abusive messages and death threats.