Mother arrested in front of her children for calling transgender woman a man has been charged with trolling
A 38-year-old woman, who was arrested in front of her children in December last year after referring to a transgender woman as a man, been charged with trolling.
The woman, identified as Kate Scottow, 38, is set to face magistrates on charges of making malicious communications over her social media comments about trans campaigner Stephanie Hayden.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said that Scottow had been charged over "persistent" messages aimed at causing "annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety" to another person between the period of September 2018 and May 2019.
Shortly after her arrest in December, Boris Johnson had criticized the move, calling it an "abuse of manpower and police facilities," particularly at a time when crime in the country is at an all-time high.
Three officers had showed up at Sctotow's home in Hitchin, Hertfordshire last year and arrested her as her 10-year-old daughter and 20-month-old son looked on.
Scottow was taken to a police station for questioning, where she said she was detained in a cell for nearly seven hours before being questioned regarding the case.
Johnson, who was then a backbench Tory MP, had criticized Scottow's arrest in a newspaper column, writing: "Is this really the right way to fight crime? Is this what our brave police officers signed up to do? Are you really telling me that it is a sensible ordering of priorities, when violence on the streets would seem to be getting out of control?"
A CPS spokesperson, on Saturday night, said that the charge against Scottow had been authorized on August 21 "after reviewing a file of evidence from Hertfordshire Police relating to social media posts." She is set to appear at Stevenage Magistrates' Court on September 18, according to the Daily Mail.
The charges come six months after Britain's first transgender hate crime prosecution was stopped by a judge who declared: "There is no case and never was a case."
Miranda Yardley had claimed that she had to suffer ten months of hell after she was accused of harassing a transgender activist on social media. However, District Judge John Woollard said there was no evidence of a crime and dismissed the case.