Teenage jailed for Cyber-bullying

Worcester News 21 Nov 2009

A TEENAGER who became the first person in Britain to be sent to prison for being a Facebook bully has spoken of her remorse. Keeley Houghton, aged 18, who was jailed for six weeks after posting a threatening message on the social networking website Facebook.

Keeley Houghton was locked up after she posted a threatening message on the social networking site. She was described as “warped”, “nasty” and a “coward” by district judge Bruce Morgan for writing that she was going to “kill” victim Emily Moore on her profile status following a row in a pub.

But, speaking to your Worcester News yesterday, the 18-year-old insisted she was not a bully.

Miss Houghton, who had not got on with Miss Moore since the age of 14, admitted what she wrote had been “terrible”.

“I do feel bad for writing that,” she said. “I would have been very upset if I had seen a comment like that about me and it was terrible, but we have never got on.

“I understand how she felt about the comment and that it wasn’t particularly nice.”

Miss Houghton spent six weeks of her three-month sentence – imposed at Worcester Magistrates court in August – at the Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire, and was released last month.

Full story on Worcester News.