A Northampton childminder who was jailed for inciting racial hatred after the Southport murders has said she is considering legal action against the police.
Lucy Connolly was released from HMP Peterborough on Thursday, nine months into her 31-month sentence, after she pleaded guilty to inciting racial hatred by publishing and distributing “threatening or abusive” written material on X.
The 42-year-old posted in an apparent reference to asylum seekers staying in UK hotels on 29 July – the day three girls were killed in Southport – last year: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.”
The mother-of-three, whose husband is a Conservative councillor, had shared the post after false rumours circulated online that the Southport murderer was an asylum seeker. He was later named as UK-born teenager Axel Rudakubana.
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Connolly’s post was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
Shortly after her release from prison, Connolly accused officials of issuing “false information” over her police interview.
She told The Telegraph and Dan Wootton’s show on YouTube that she was considering legal action over a statement which suggested she told officers in her police interview that she did not like immigrants.
“I do believe that they, you know, issued false information. I do think that they crossed the line and they didn’t do things they should and I will be taking that up with them,” she told Wootton.
“How far I take that, I don’t know at this point, but it is definitely something I’ll be taking up with them.”
She told The Telegraph that police were “dishonest” and her words were “massively twisted and used against me” in a statement released by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
A press release from the CPS after her guilty plea on 2 September included a quote from Frank Ferguson, head of the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Unit, which said: “During police interview Lucy Connolly stated she had strong views on immigration, told officers she did not like immigrants and claimed that children were not safe from them.”
Connolly said she will release the content of the police interview so people can see what the police and the CPS said are “two very different things to what I said in my interview”.
She added: “I made it quite clear to them that I know the difference between immigration and illegal immigration. But I feel that that was massively twisted and used against me.”
The CPS declined to comment any further when approached, but pointed Sky News to their updated release, where the word “illegal” appeared to have been added to the original statement.
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A Northamptonshire Police spokesperson said: “We are aware of comments made by Lucy Connolly in an interview following her release from prison.
“We hope to contact Mrs Connolly in the coming days to understand the issues she has raised around Northamptonshire Police.”
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Speaking with Wootton, the host claimed Connolly would meet representatives of the Trump administration on Saturday.
Asked about that meeting, Connolly said: “Not much, just that they’re very interested in the way things are going in the UK, and they are obviously big advocates for free speech, and their lawyers are keen to speak with me.”
She also told Wootton: “I should never have said what I said. It was wrong.
“But I am no far-right activist. I’m no far-right thug.”
