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Jane Austen Twitter row: two plead guilty to abusive tweets Jane Austen Twitter row: two plead guilty to abusive tweets
(35 minutes later)
Two people have pleaded guilty to sending "menacing" tweets to a feminist campaigner following her successful campaign to ensure a woman features on British banknotes. The feminist campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez has said she is relieved after two people pleaded guilty to sending her menacing tweets, but she said dozens of other online abusers were still walking free.
John Nimmo, 25, and Isabella Sorley, 23, admitted a charge of sending the messages in July last year to the 29-year-old student, Caroline Criado-Perez. John Nimmo, 25, from South Shields, and Isabella Sorley, 23, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne, pleaded guilty on Tuesday at Westminster magistrates court to abusing Criado-Perez online. Sorley was remanded in custody and Nimmo was bailed, both until 24 January, when they will face sentencing.
Nimmo, from South Shields, Tyne and Wear, and Sorley, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne sent the tweets after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, revealed that the author Jane Austen would replace Charles Darwin as the face of the £10 note. The pair were arrested after sending abusive tweets to Criado-Perez following her successful campaign to keep a woman on British banknotes, in a case that shed light on the online abuse faced by some women in the public eye. The Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy and the historian Professor Mary Beard were also targeted with graphic threats after offering the writer and campaigner their support.
The announcement was hailed as a brilliant day for women by Criado-Perez, who led a campaign to ensure a female face on British banknotes in the wake of the Bank's announcement in April that social reformer Elizabeth Fry was to be dropped from the £5 note in favour of Winston Churchill. Criado-Perez said she was relieved and happy at the pair's decision to plead guilty but she remained disappointed that the perpetrators of the very worst abuse were not facing justice.
"Today has been horrible, I've felt incredibly tense and have found it difficult to eat and breathe, so I'm happy they decided to plead guilty as we now do not have to go through the trial and it's over, but this was just the tip of the iceberg," she said.
"These are just two people – there are many others who said the most awful, graphic things to me and they are not even under investigation. It feels very much like a pyrrhic victory."
Criado-Perez said other threats had described mutilating her genitalia, stalking her outside her house, beating and gang-raping her. "It doesn't feel like justice has been done when those people are just going to get away with it. The two people who pleaded guilty today are just the ones the police could track – the others are walking free."
But she said she hoped the guilty pleas would give courage to other women abused online to speak out. "From the look of my Twitter feed, a lot of women are very happy about this, so that is a good way to look at it," she said. "If some justice is seen to be done then maybe that will give other women courage to come forward and hopefully make [abusers] think twice."
Sorley and Nimmo posted their tweets – which included rape threats – in July last year after the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said Jane Austen would replace Charles Darwin on the £10 note. Criado-Perez had begun the campaign after the bank announced in April that the social reformer Elizabeth Fry would be dropped from £5 notes in favour of Sir Winston Churchill, leaving no female figure on banknotes.
The Crown Prosecution Service has previously said it will not pursue the prosecution of a separate suspect who allegedly sent offensive messages to Creasy.
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