Australian Feminist Receives Rape Threats After Campaigning Against Convicted Footballer

A member of a feminist group, which campaigns against sexism and such issues, was threatened of violence and rape. The campaigner, who has received the threat, has been running a campaign against a prominent football player.

Caitlin Roper from Collective Shout, the campaigning group, appealed to ban Welsh footballer Ched Evans who had been convicted of rape. The petition appealed football clubs not to hire the footballer again. Evans' fans were apparently offended with the appeal as they started abusing Roper on Twitter. ABC News quoted Roper saying that a Twitter account which was identical [image] with her own was created. The account features her picture and a similar Twitter handle. However, the Twitter account allegedly gave "a graphic list of sex acts" which Roper would like to perform. West Australian police have started the investigation on the basis of Roper's complaint.

Superintendent Rob Critchlow, on the other hand, said that it would not be possible to investigate every complaint related to online abuse. According to the officer, it is particularly difficult to investigate those alleged violations which come from overseas users. He said that people might not actually intend to do what they claimed to do on the net. "We put a risk assessment across things that come to us in every case and that especially goes for people in social media, because people can say a lot of things in social media very quickly but with no real intention or capacity to commit the offence," Critchlow said, "With many cases, we see a lot of threats come to us from overseas so there is really no capacity for that person to carry out a dangerous threat."

Talitha Stone, another campaigner of feminism, started campaigning online against U.S. rapper Tyler the Creator in June 2013. Stone found the lyrics of the rapper's songs objectionable as they allegedly featured violence and rape against women. She experienced similar situation like what Roper is apparently going through now. She received threats from the Twitter followers of the rapper. Stone said that people had even claimed that she had the secret intention to get her anal cavity forcibly penetrated by the rapper. People also claimed that feminists like Stone should be raped.

Neither of the feminist campaigners is apparently perturbed by the threats as they continue their online campaigns as usual.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au