© Skynews
Nimmo and Sorley arrive separately at Westminster Magistrates Court.
Nimmo and Sorley arrive separately at Westminster Magistrates Court.
Two people who sent abusive and menacing tweets to banknote campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and Labour MP Stella Creasy have been jailed.
Isabella Sorley, 23, and John Nimmo, 25, posted dozens of abusive tweets against both women before they were arrested.
Senior district judge Howard Riddle jailed Sorley for 12 weeks and Nimmo for eight weeks as well as ordering them to pay £400 compensation to each victim.
Earlier this month the pair pleaded guilty to sending the menacing tweets, admitting they were among the users of 86 separate Twitter accounts from which Ms Criado-Perez had received abusive messages.
Passing sentence at Westminster Magistrates Court, Judge Riddle said that both victims had suffered substantially as a result of the abuse.
He said Ms Criado-Perez had faced "panic, fear and horror" adding that she feared the "abusers would find her and carry out the threats. She felt hunted."
Comment: Despite the "happy ending" of this article, keep in mind that the federal government has estimated that at least 100,000 minors every year are sold for sex in the U.S. The men who purchase and pimp them are rarely punished. Run-away shelters, safe housing and services for these children are perennially underfunded. Instead, the most common reaction is to punish these victims.
Most children in the commercial sex industry qualify as victims under statutory rape laws. Yet Cynthia Godsoe, assistant professor of family law at Brooklyn Law School, could find not a single case of a customer of a trafficked child being prosecuted for statutory rape.
For more information see:
Give restitution to victims of child pornography, but also recognize all child victims of sexual exploitation