A man has avoided jail after threatening Angela Rayner and her children.
Benjamin Iliffe, 36, admitted sending the deputy leader of the Labour Party an abusive email.
He told the MP to ‘watch your back and your kids’ and warned her: ‘You were easy to find btw. I already found your personal home address.’
Iliffe was sentenced to 15 weeks in prison suspended for 18 months at Huntingdon Magistrates’ Court.
He also admitted possessing a quantity of cannabis on Wednesday when he was arrested.
Iliffe, of Chatteris in Cambridgeshire, was made subject of a two-year restraining order not to contact Ms Rayner directly or indirectly, not to talk about her on social media and not to go to her Manchester office.
She reported severeal threatening contacts from different sources over a number of weeks to police.
After the arrest, her spokesperson said: ‘Abuse and threats of this nature don’t just have an impact on Angela but also on her family, her children and her staff who are on the receiving end of these communications.’
Ms Rayner is on compassionate leave from her frontline politics role after losing a loved one.
Iliffe, who appeared by video-link from Thorpe Wood police station in Peterborough, struggles with ‘low self esteem’ and ‘drug use’, according to his defence.
His solicitor added: ‘He’s expressed twice that he would wish an opportunity to apologise personally to Ms Rayner for the fear and distress he caused.’
Presiding magistrate Andrew Riddington said: ‘We believe that the offences are so serious that it does cross the custody threshold.
‘It’s so serious because of the psychological harm caused to a public servant.’
He avoided immediate incarceration because of his early guilty plea and the ‘remorse shown’.
Iliffe was also ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work and 35 days of a rehabilitation activity.
He was made to pay £85 costs, a £128 victim surcharge and fined £50 for the cannabis, which was ordered to be forfeited and destroyed.
Two other men, who police don’t believe to be connected, have also been arrested.
A 70-year-old in South Yorkshire and a 52-year-old in Halifax, West Yorkshire have been question by officers.
The oldest man was arrested on Thursday morning and later bailed over abusive emails received by Ms Rayner, a mother-of-three, on October 16.
The 52-year-old, who has also been bailed, was arrested over abusive phone calls she received a day earlier.
The investigation by at least three police forces comes amid increased concern over the safety of MPs and the level of abuse they receive following the killing of Sir David Amess.
The veteran Conservative MP for Southend West was stabbed in a suspected terror attack during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
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