A suicidal campaigner for the UK’s Conservative Party tweeted a string of sexual assault allegations against fellow members, and timed them to be released after her death — just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the group, according to a new report.
Jade Smith, 21, was found dead Sunday near her home in Saltburn, Teesside, Metro UK reported Thursday.
Smith had appeared on the BBC program “The Mighty Redcar,” a documentary series about Redcar and Grangetown, two towns in North Yorkshire plagued by high unemployment following the shutdown of a steel mill.
Smith, who had an “I love Boris Johnson” tattoo on her leg, timed her tweets to appear Wednesday during the prime minister’s address to the Conservative Party conference, Metro UK reported.
“There’s one last topic I want to talk about before I go and say my goodbye,” the string of tweets began, according to the outlet. “This is the last time I’ll ever have a platform to ask them to change, to beg them for young people’s sake to change.”
“Back in 2015/2016 I tried to kill myself several times because of the Tory party,” she said, using the informal term for the Conservative Party. “I was institutionalized due to bullying and harassment I received. I was stalked by the press, the press stood outside my college with cameras.”
She said she was bullied as a 17- and 18-year-old girl — and has always “received abuse” for her affiliation with the Conservative Party.
“But the abuse we receive from each other and the older people in our associations is what takes it too far,” she continued. “We shouldn’t have to put up with the bullying from each other. We shouldn’t have to be worried that our friends are going to be raped at conference or at the very least sexually assaulted. We shouldn’t have to put up with creepy weird old men maturating over us or grabbing us to go and chat to their friends and try to take us home at the end of the night. There’s a reason we don’t feel safe at conference.”
Her account has since been suspended and the tweets are no longer available.
Chris Doughty, director of Carewatch Redcar & Cleveland, a home health care service where Smith worked, told Metro that he was “shocked” to read his former employee’s tweets.
“We had no idea,” Doughty said. “She hadn’t put any history of mental health problems or anything when she came for the job. I always want to help the staff to alleviate their stress. They are out on their own, of course they are under stress.”
Smith’s local Parliament member, Simon Richard Clarke, who represents Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, called her a “remarkable and complex person.”
“She would be the first to say she had made some mistakes, but she also had real qualities — not least a fierce work ethic, a mischievous sense of humor and a passionate love of our area,” Clarke told Metro. “For me, today’s posthumous tweets just reinforce the sadness I feel for Jade’s friends and family, and as far as the bullying and harassment allegations go, I know that the Conservative Party will take all of those incredibly seriously and will be looking into the circumstances surrounding this truly tragic incident.”
