A feminist campaigner subjected to rape and death threats on Twitter has deleted her account on the site, a day after raising concerns about the police investigation into the abuse.
Caroline Criado-Perez, from north London, was subjected to a string of violent and obscene messages after she was involved in a campaign to have a woman's picture printed on a new banknote.
On Thursday, she claimed police had lost evidence linked to the case, which was denied by Scotland Yard, and criticised officers for a lack of sensitivity.
She said: "It's just appalling. I got an email saying 'why don't you go through what you've had' from three users with certain handles. It just shows such insensitivity to someone who's been through so much, I can't believe it. I've spent the afternoon crying just from the sheer awfulness of it.
"They wanted me to go through all the Tweets again because of their incompetence. Every time I have to go through it it's reliving it all over again."
Ms Criado-Perez received a fresh stream of violent rape threats which she sent to police.
Scotland Yard said officers were trying to contact the campaigner to talk about the case. A spokesman said: "We are now in a position to confirm that the Metropolitan Police Service has not lost any evidence gathered as part of this investigation. The tweets referred to have in fact already been put to a suspect in interview."
A 21-year-old arrested in Manchester, a 25-year-old man questioned by Northumbria Police and a 32-year-old man arrested in Bristol are all due to answer police bail in mid-September.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article