A childminder is facing a prison sentence for threatening asylum seekers in a social media post. Lucy Connolly, 41, who pleaded guilty to stirring up racial hatred, has been remanded in custody and told to expect a “substantial custodial sentence” when she next appears in court.

“Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care […] if that makes me racist, so be it,” she wrote. Few people would defend Connolly’s post, which appears to have been sent shortly after the fatal attacks on three young girls in Southport at the end of July. But there is no evidence that Connolly intended to carry out her threat, which she quickly deleted and apologised for.

That certainly wasn’t the case when a man called Muhammad Hassan, who had previously abused three Asian women because he didn’t like how they were dressed, appeared in court last week. Hassan was charged with assaulting the women when they stopped for petrol at a service station in Bradford. He berated them as “prostitutes”, seizing the driver’s head and slamming it into the dashboard. Then he grabbed the second woman and punched her in the head, before hitting the third woman as well.

The attacks were described by the judge as “an extremely abusive, controlling and violent incident”. But Hassan didn’t end up in prison. He was sentenced to six months, suspended for two years. Misogyny is not a hate crime in this country but Hassan could have been charged with a religiously aggravated offence, which would have attracted a heavier punishment. Instead, he is merely required to do 180 hours of unpaid work and wear an electronic tag for four months, while his victims live in fear of running into him again.

There is a question here about how the criminal justice system assesses and responds to risk. From personal experience, I know that the police are not much interested in threats from Islamists, one of whom — he called himself Celtic Abdullah — threatened to blow up the offices of the newspaper I was writing for a few years ago. I took his email to my local police station, where the desk sergeant stared at it. “What have you done to upset him?” was his response.

A couple of days later, another officer called me to say he wasn’t going to take any further action. “It’s not racist,” he claimed when I reminded him about the content of the email. I suggested that threatening to kill me was a criminal offence, but he wasn’t interested.

Threats against asylum seekers are horrible, especially in a highly charged atmosphere when thuggish men have taken to the streets. Clearly our new government, headed by a Prime Minister who used to run the Crown Prosecution Service, wants to be seen to be tough on public disorder. But Connolly didn’t join a riot or act on her post.

She has a tragic history, losing a son at the age of 19 months after a series of medical errors. It’s hard to see what would be achieved by separating her from her surviving children, when non-custodial options are available. If she is sent to prison, while a man caught on CCTV physically attacking three women walks free, the “two-tier” justice system jibe will really deserve to stick.

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Joan Smith is a novelist and columnist. She was previously Chair of the Mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls Board, and is on the advisory group for Sex Matters. Her book Unfortunately, She Was A Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women was published in November 2024.

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