Chloe Cowan, a 20-year-old from Kent, has been handed a three-year jail sentence and banned from using any internet-enabled device for 10 years, after pretending to be the ghost of a murdered child to launch a series of hate attacks on Twitter… Social media abuse is a common problem, but this seems to take things to a new low.

In what was deemed to be “truly breathtaking” cruelty, she admitted sending disturbing Tweets to the mother of murdered toddler, James Bulger – posing as one of the child’s killers and even went so far as to claim she is the ghost of him. The student later pleaded guilty to offences of stalking under Section 4 of the 1997 Protection Of Harassment Act.

In the eyes of the judge, this was “designed to cause maximum distress and anguish” to the mother of the boy, and it’s a rather disgusting act of social media harassment that unsurprisingly happened on Twitter.

This is in no way moving the spotlight off of Chloe and her actions, but abuse on this network has consistently been a problem over the 10 years it has been live – and yes, Twitter’s 10th birthday actually falls on today.

My heartfelt thoughts go out to the mother of James Bulger. This is disgraceful.