Chloe Madeley has posted a statement addressing the rape threats she’s recently been receiving on Twitter, claiming that threatening someone does not constitute “freedom of speech”.
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Last week, Chloe’s father Richard Madeley revealed that he would be going to the police over the Twitter abuse his daughter had been on the receiving end of, following her mum Judy Finnigan’s controversial comments about convicted rapist Ched Evans.
The news Richard would be taking legal action against the offending Twitter trolls provoked ridicule from some critics, including Katie Hopkins, who suggested that Chloe should toughen up and accept that online abuse is par for the course when you’re on TV.
Chloe Madeley
Chloe has now tweeted a lengthy statement on her own page, claiming that she’s aware she isn’t the “first person to be trolled”, but admitting that she doesn’t think “freedom of speech” covers threatening somebody online.
In the tweet, she explains that she has been receiving Twitter abuse for as long as she has been using social media, but now feels the threats of sexual abuse have “crossed the line” into “criminal behaviour”.
She also calls for reform in the Communications Act, which she claims is outdated because it was made official in a time before social media had become “the most influential and powerful voice of the people”.
Chloe with her parents, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan
Chloe first began to receive threats of rape after her mum suggested, during her debut appearance on ‘Loose Women’, that Ched’s sexual assault on a 19-year-old girl was “non-violent”, which she later publicly apologised for, following a massive backlash.