Ashley Judd Files Charges Against Internet Trolls

The actor Ashley Judd has said she will inform police about Twitter users who sexually harass her, and press charges against them.

Judd, known for 90s crime thrillers Heat and Kiss the Girls as well as her current role in the Divergent series, told the US show Today: “The amount of gender violence I experience is absolutely extraordinary, and a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that’s directed at me on social media.”

“That many people?” asked the Today interviewer Craig Melvin. “That many people, that explicit, that overt,” replied Judd. In another TV interview she added: “Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for what they write, and not allow this misinterpretation and shaming culture on social media to persist. And by the way, I’m pressing charges.”

Apologising for their content, Judd retweeted some of the messages she was sent, reacting to her own tweets about the March Madness college basketball tournament. “What the hell do you even do you stuck up cunt. What are you famous for again,” read one, with another reading: “Go suck on Cal’s two inch dick ye Bitch whore.” Judd tweeted: “When when I express a stout opinion during #MarchMadness I am called a whore, c---, threatened with sexual violence. Not okay.”

Judd also retweeted messages of support from Twitter users who reported similar abuse:

I spent most of my teens and early 20s hiding the fact I was a @Dodgers #baseball fan because it doesn't just happen to @AshleyJudd

Her stance comes as other female stars have stopped using the social network thanks to abuse. Rapper Iggy Azalea wrote that social media “is too negative and draining” and handed her Twitter account to her management, while Lena Dunham said: “I deleted Twitter because I’m trying to create a safer space for myself emotionally.”

In a recent internal memo to staff triggered by a Guardian comment piece by Lindy West describing her abuse on Twitter, the company’s CEO Dick Costolo wrote: “We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we’ve sucked at it for years... I’m frankly ashamed of how poorly we’ve dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It’s absurd. There’s no excuse for it.”

He since told the New York Times that the company was still trying to draw up a plan to combat abuse: “We’ve drawn a line on what constitutes harassment and abuse. I believe that we haven’t yet drawn that line to put the cost of dealing with harassment on those doing the harassing. It shouldn’t be the person who’s being harassed who has to do a lot of work.”