Being a woman on the internet in possession of an opinion has long been a wild ride. For most women in public life, abuse is so much worse than a man would get. And I think most of us are so used to it that we barely flinch unless the abuse directly threatens us or the people we love.

The misogynistic trolls who spend so much of their time trying to make life miserable for women they don’t agree with rarely face consequences. Now one of them has found a new way to persecute a high profile feminist and has got away with it.

Labour MP Stella Creasy has described in today’s Times (£) how a misogynistic troll went as far as reporting her to social services, saying that her views on violence against women and girls put them at risk. How on earth wanting to make misogyny a hate crime puts anyone at risk is beyond me.

Thankfully her local social services didn’t take long to realise that it was actually Stella who was at risk. But when the MP complained to the Police, she was shocked at the outcome:

The police accept that his behaviour is harassing but aren’t treating this as a crime because “as you had kids he was worried that your views would affect their upbringing, this belief was genuine and not [motivated] by any sort of hate”.

At no point have they expressed any concern about the impact of this incident on my children, instead claiming that, as I am an elected representative, I should “expect” to be challenged in this way.

As Stella says, this is just another example of the institutionalised misogyny of the Police laid bare in the Casey Report.

Stella Creasy’s children now have social services records because someone who had never met them or seen them said they were at risk. Hard stretched child protection departments do not have the time or the resources to deal with these sorts of vexatious complaints and there should be consequences for those who make them.

Understandably, Stella wants us all to contact our MPs to ask them to call for action against this sort of harassment.

You can’t have free speech if 50% of the conversation is in fear you might get their kids taken away for disagreeing with them – ask your MP to help raise this harassment with the home office. pic.twitter.com/FIvX9qkd4B

— stellacreasy (@stellacreasy) April 29, 2023

The appalling response from the Police calls into question whether half the population can have any confidence in them to properly discharge their duties to us. As Stella says in her Times article:

Any right-minded person would recognise the hurt accusing someone of being dangerous to their children causes, and therefore why such an allegation is so serious. Yet in reacting this way the police have set a precedent that women in the public eye should expect to face questions about their fitness to be a parent from those who disagree with them.

If we are going to have a diverse politics, we need to make sure that diverse groups of people are not subjected to this sort of harassment. If we give a free pass to trolls to target their kids or otherwise get away with hate-fuelled behaviour, women, mothers, disabled people, LGBT people, people of colour might conclude that it simply isn’t worth it to get into Parliament. That would be a very bad thing.

* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings