Katie Price has launched a petition to make online abuse a specific criminal offence with a register of offenders.
The TV personality and former glamour model announced the petition on her Instagram account, after sharing screenshots of online abuse directed at her son Harvey, who is who is blind and has autism, ADHD and Prader-Willi syndrome, a genetic disorder affecting appetite and muscle development.
She said: “My son has very complex needs and he gets online bullying trolls and people who abuse his size, colour, looks and disability. Harvey is very fortunate not to understand, but I do, and I will do everything in my power to make sure these trolling bullies get punished.
“Every day, people from all ages get trolling bullies for all different reasons, and a lot of it is causing suicide.
“It’s about time these trolls and bullies get punished.”
Price has regularly condemned abusive posts targeting her son, who is 14. In February, a teenager was arrested after online abuse directed at Harvey. And in January a man apologised after the Sun revealed he had sent a string of offensive tweets to Price. Last week, after Price tweeted she had passed the location of the Westminster attack, her son became the target of further abuse.
Last year, the police chief constable Stephen Kavanagh warned that existing laws were not sufficient to deal with an “unimagined scale of online abuse”. He told the Guardian: “No police chief would claim the way we deliver police services has sufficiently adapted to the new threat and harms that the internet brings.”
The government is required to respond to all petitions which receive more than 10,000 signatures. At the time of publishing, Price’s petition had reached more than 83,000 signatures.
