Labour MP Dawn Butler has vowed to report online message board Mumsnet to the Metropolitan Police after users on the site and other social media slammed her reaction to the Brianna Ghey murder trial verdict.
The Brent Central MP, 54, said she would refer the message board to the authorities after she claimed to have received messages from ‘nasty, vicious, inhumane’ people criticising her suggestion that the teenager’s murder was driven by transphobia.
Trans teenager Brianna, 16, was stabbed to death in Warrington, Cheshire in February this year by two teenagers who have since been convicted of her murder. Police say they do not believe the murder was driven by transphobia.
After the teens were convicted, Ms Butler shared a video of Brianna’s father Peter Spooner outside court on X, formerly Twitter, claiming: ‘This cruel government has created so much hate towards the trans community they should be ashamed.’
But the comments were seized upon by Mumsnet users who accused her of ‘crowbarring’ in ‘virtue signalling’.
Labour MP Dawn Butler – pictured here at the GUBA Awards in London last month – says she plans to report Mumsnet to Scotland Yard
Ms Butler appeared to suggest the killing of Brianna Ghey had been driven by a hatred of trans people – before pledging to report Mumsnet to the police after her remarks were criticised
Ms Butler had posted a comment on the murder of trans teen Brianna Ghey (pictured), claiming the government had created ‘so much hate towards the trans community’
X users criticised Ms Butler’s response to the conviction of Brianna Ghey’s killers earlier this week
Another expressed a desire to see the MP ‘ratioed’ on X – a term for when a user’s replies are overwhelmed with negative comments, outnumbering supportive comments, likes and retweets.
Other users accused Ms Butler of ‘weaponising’ Brianna’s murder, calling her remarks ‘gross’ and ‘political point scoring’.
Ms Butler then tweeted: ‘Oh I wondered where these nasty vicious inhumane people were coming from. Time for me to unfollow and report Mumsnet to @metpoliceuk.’
However, this post then attracted further criticism from users who accused her of stifling free speech. One said: ‘Women are allowed to have a chat, Dawn.’
Another added: ‘People criticised you for making wholly inappropriate remarks at the conclusion of a horrible murder case.
‘You do know that criticising politicians for their public utterances is not actually illegal?’
One Mumsnet user said the notion of the MP reporting the website to police was ‘bonkers’.
Mumsnet – which has previously been accused of hosting transphobic views posted by its members – responded directly to the MP’s tweet, asking her to get in touch if she identified particularly troubling posts.
It said: ‘Hi Dawn, our talk guidelines are clear and we don’t permit posts that break the law, including hate speech. If you’ve seen a post that you think falls into this category, please do report it.’
In a further statement to , Mumsnet founder and CEO Justine Roberts said: ‘Our forum guidelines are pretty clear. We allow legal discussion, which sometimes means people will make comments that individuals don’t agree with or like.
‘We specifically disallow hate speech and deliberately inflammatory posts and we have an active moderation team who respond, on average in under an hour, to complaints about posts.
‘It’s somewhat ironic that Ms Butler chose to post her attack on Mumsnet on X (formerly Twitter) which regularly hosts comments that wouldn’t last a moment on Mumsnet and where the moderation is light touch at best.
‘We see this kind of double standard a lot and I’m beginning to wonder if it might be because Mumsnet is the only major platform dominated by women’s voices.’
has contacted Dawn Butler and the Metropolitan Police for further comment.
The murder of trans teen Brianna Ghey at the hands of two teenagers shocked the nation – but police who investigated the killing and ultimately brought her murderers to justice say they do not believe the crime was motivated by hate.
Her killers had drawn up a ‘kill list’ featuring four other children, while Girl X had expressed a fascination with serial killers.
Text messages sent by Boy Y made reference to Brianna’s transgender identity, including referring to her as ‘it’, asking whether she was a ‘femboy or a t*****?’ and whether, when attacked, she would ‘scream like a man or a girl’.
Brianna, 16, was stabbed with a hunting knife 28 times in a park Cheshire, on February 11
Some of the comments on Mumsnet criticising both her initial comment and her subsequent post about reporting the message board to the police
In another conversation, he said: ‘Really all I want to see is what size d*** it had.’
Detective Superintendent Mike Evans, head of crime at Cheshire Police, told the Mail after the trial concluded: ‘If it was not Brianna, it would have been one of the other four children on the list.
‘It is just Brianna was the one who was accessible at that time and the focus of those desires.
Follow every detail of the case on The Mail’s acclaimed podcast The Trial
‘In a strange way Girl X was obsessed with Brianna, almost attracted and intrigued by her. With Boy Y, there is some really horrific and dehumanising transphobic comments.
‘Brianna was not killed because she was transgender, but the fact that she was transgender made her a bit more vulnerable and accessible.
‘Whoever they had attacked that day they would have shown that level of contempt and disrespect for, there is nothing to suggest it was a worse attack because Brianna was transgender.’
The matter will be decided by the judge when aggravating factors are considered at the February 2 sentencing hearing.
Girl X and Boy Y will be named after they are sentenced after an application was made to the court on behalf of the PA news agency and ITV that has been supported by Brianna’s family.
Trial judge Mrs Justice Yip said she was in favour of removing the restrictions, but said the order would only be lifted on the day of sentencing.
Lawyers for both defendants opposed the bid, citing possible consequences for the killers’ families. Girl X’s family have already received death threats, they said.
The prosecution took a ‘neutral’ position, Mrs Justice Yip added.
She said: ‘The public will naturally wish to know the identities of the young people responsible as they seek to understand how children could do something so dreadful.
‘Continuing restrictions inhibits full and informed debate and restricts the full reporting of the case.’