Gloucestershire Echo

Former mayor quits social media after online abuse

- Robin JENKINS robin.jenkins@reachplc.com

FORMER Cheltenham mayor and prolific social media user Klara Sudbury says she has stopped using the medium after being bullied.

Mrs Sudbury, who is a member of Cheltenham Borough Council and Gloucester­shire County Council, said she received a “torrent of abuse” on social media after commenting on a body artist appearing semi-naked at an event.

The female model was covered in body paint but little else as part of an event to promote Cheltenham as ‘The Festival Town’ last month.

It was organised by Marketing Cheltenham and led Mrs Sudbury to say on Twitter: “Women and girls in this town are doing really amazing things in business, hospitalit­y, public life & community action but can’t always find their voices heard.

“Promoting Cheltenham using a semi-naked woman is unhelpful.”

Mrs Sudbury said that led to such a large number of strongly-worded responses on Twitter and Facebook that she felt bullied and decided to come off both mediums.

She had previously used Twitter in particular a great deal to raise awareness of things she felt were important

in Cheltenham, as well as to help charitable causes.

Speaking about her decision to take social media out of her life for now, she said: “I had a torrent of abuse and have been off for about two weeks.

“I came off because off because of the abuse and because Marketing Cheltenham did nothing to help me. I was very upset.”

She stressed that she did not think that body art was sexist but she stood by her comment that having the seminaked body artist at that event had been unhelpful.

She felt it was not relevant to the promotion of the town and its many festivals.

But the consequenc­e of her criticism was that those who disagreed told her in no uncertain terms.

She said: “It’s been a nightmare. One woman bombarded me with about 40 tweets.

“I’ve lost interest in social media. The only thing I can do is to remove myself from the situation.”

Asked if she might return to social media at some point, she said: “I don’t know. I don’t feel like it at the moment.

“I had nearly 5,000 followers on Twitter. I’ve never had anything like this before.”

Marketing Cheltenham has been approached for comment.

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