Trolled feminist reveals her MOTHER has now received online threats

Caroline Criado-Perez received of death and rape threats on Twitter



More than a month later, she is still receiving Twitter abuse on a daily basis

Journalist revealed even her mother has been targeted with hate mail



Target: Caroline Criado-Perez has revealed she is still receiving Twitter abuse on a daily basis and even her mother has been targeted

Feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez is still being subjected to sexist online abuse and has now revealed that internet trolls have even targeted her mother.



The journalist, who hit the headlines in July after receiving a torrent of death and rape threats on Twitter after campaigning for a woman to placed on banknotes, admitted she is still receiving abusive comments on online social-networks on a daily basis.



In one shocking example, Ms Criado-Perez told how a man even wrote anonymously to her mother since the attacks became public and she continues to receive abusive mail.



Speaking at a conference in London, she admitted the abuse has had a devastating impact on her life but there is little the police can do to stop it.



She said: 'These communications hurt and irritated in equal measure.



'They didn’t hurt because they were overtly abusive: they hurt because it was a reminder of how far women had to go before we were treated equally – but on the other hand, they were a reminder of how important the campaign was.



'But then I got a letter, sent to my mum’s house. And this was my first taste of how far some men will go to intimidate women they disapprove of.



'The letter was not in itself threatening, but it left me shaken – as it was intended to.



'The contents of the letter were immaterial in many ways – they were merely a conduit for a man to tell me, a woman he disliked, that he knew were I lived.



'That he’d gone to the trouble of seeking out my address online. That he could come round any time he wanted.



'On the advice of some friends, I called the police. They said there was nothing they could do. So, I tried to forget the letter, and I hoped I wouldn’t hear from him again.'

But the journalist then went on to say that her mother had received another letter from the same man - just last week.



Ms Criado-Perez made the revelations at a conference in London yesterday. She told how the abuse is still ongoing, although they are now more of a sexist nature than death threats.



Standing together: Ms Criado-Perez's supporters took to Twitter to express their outrage at the abuse and threats she received from online trolls after campaigning for a woman to be put on the new £10 banknote



She said: 'The threats have more or less stopped, they only come through very occasionally now.



'What I now get is more general sexist abuse because now I'm sort of a lightning rod for it.



'I'm the person people think of when they think "right, I want to go and abuse a woman, there's a woman who is really famous for being abused, I'll do that".

'I get that on a daily basis now and obviously it is really wearing.'



Several other high profile women - including the eminent historian Mary Beard - also reported threats in the wake of the publicity generated as a result of Ms Criado-Perez speaking out.



Twitter has since introduced a 'report tweet' option for users who are sent abusive messages following a campaign by a number of women who were targeted on the site.

Ms Criado-Perez spoke ahead of a keynote speech at the Cyber Stalking and Harassment Conference in Bloomsbury.

She told of the devastating impact the constant abuse has had on her life, saying: 'The impact of all this on my life has been dramatic.



MP Mary Macleod, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, MP Stella Creasy and Caroline Criado-Perez, pose after the announcement that Jane Austen will appear on the new £10 note

'When it was at its height I struggled to eat, to sleep, to work. I lost about half a stone in a matter of days.



'I was exhausted and weighed down by carrying these vivid images, this tidal wave of hate around with me wherever I went. And I kept being asked to relive the experience for endless media interviews – when I look back at that relentless attention, I can’t quite comprehend it. It didn’t feel real then, and it doesn’t feel real now. I still can’t quite believe this has happened to me.



'The psychological fall-out is still unravelling. I feel like I’m walking around like a timer about to explode; I’m functioning at just under boiling point – and it takes so little to make me cry – or to make me scream.'

The conference was organised by Women's Aid, which warned social media and associated technology provides perpetrators of domestic violence with 'an extra tool to threaten, control and humiliate'.

Ms Criado-Perez said there were links between what she suffered at the hands Twitter trolls and the online abuse and threats carried out as part of a pattern of domestic violence.



'It's part of the kind sort of culture that thinks that threatening women through threats of sexual violence and silencing them in that way, that's something acceptable to do,' she said.



'Another thing that is linked is that with domestic violence (is) so many people ask "why does she stay, why does she put up with it?"



'The same sort of thing was happening to me when I was being abused online, people were saying to get off Twitter, don't feed the trolls.



'It's about this way we focus on the behaviour of the victim and police their behaviour rather than looking at why certain men are acting in this way towards women.



'We don't need women to change their behaviour so they don't provoke this behaviour, we need this behaviour to stop.'

Campaign: Ms Criado-Perez and several other high profile women were subjected to online threats after supporting a bid for a woman to be placed on the reverse of the new £10 note. Jane Austen was eventually chosen, pictured

General manager of Twitter UK Tony Wang said that the company takes online abuse seriously



