A parish clerk has detailed her family’s “horrific” experience with a dead rat – and it forms just one of several “unacceptable” trends of abuse against public officials, experts have warned.
The anonymous official, who has worked in the East Midlands for a decade, was subject to torrid abuse – just for doing her job.
She said: “It started with comments which became threats… Then I started getting dead animals left on my doorstep, with one dead rat pushed through the letterbox.
“My daughter yelled, 'Mum there is a dead rat in the house!'.
The anonymous parish clerk said she found a dead rat pushed through her letterbox
Denitsa Kireva/Pexels
“And then I knew straight away what had happened. It was just horrific… But I didn't want my daughter to know what the significance was.”
The parish clerk said she thought the incidents were related to her work in decision-making for the local council, she told the BBC.
She said: “A couple of summers later, I was trapped in the council building with two men outside, live streaming to social media and shouting abuse at me – it was the most awful thing I've ever gone through.”
Her experience isn’t a one-off; a joint investigation by the Society of Local Council Clerks (SLCC) and the BBC into abuse and intimidation in local government warned today that levels of abuse were “unacceptably high”.LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
The high-profile murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess sparked fear among councillors over abuse
PA/UK Parliament
The report’s focus lies at a local level, but councillors have said the murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess have informed their fears about job-related abuse.
Clare Golby, a Conservative county and borough councillor, said: “I don't want to be Nuneaton's David Ames or Jo Cox, so I don't do face-to-face surgeries anymore.
“I don't like leaving meetings alone or going to the car park alone. I need people with me. I don't like my kids coming to public events or the carnival with me, my husband is worried – what if someone has a go at me?
“The law says it is political discourse. But when you're on the receiving end it's not. It is abuse, harassment and stalking.”
Golby said she had also received a campaign of conspiracy-theory-driven online harassment and had found a swastika taped to her car in the past, with abuse getting “noticeably worse since the pandemic”.
Linda Hedley, general secretary of the Association of Local Council Clerks, said: “I’ve had clerks phone me saying 'I can’t go into the office, I’m so frightened'.
“I’ve had clerks who have been so harassed, bullied and frightened that they’ve had nervous breakdowns.”
Another councillor told the BBC that one member of the public abused him and his colleagues online so much that they were handed a three-year prison sentence for persistent harassment and stalking.
The shocking stories come as “almost half” of councillors have faced “a serious incident of abuse”, according to research by De Montfort University and the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE).
APSE said 22 per cent of councils represented in their report have had issues “so serious it required the council to create an action plan to keep councillors and officers safe” – including bringing in the police or external security help.