Rachel Riley was so stressed by social media trolls that her unborn baby stopped moving.
The Countdown presenter is expecting her first child with husband former Strictly Come Dancing star Pasha Kovalev.
However, she’s revealed that vicious trolling from people who are upset with her criticism of the Labour party, including her backing of a BBC Panorama documentary which questioned whether Labour is anti-Semetic, left her so upset that her baby stopped wriggling around.
Read more: Countdown’s Rachel Riley makes awkward Strictly Come Dancing confession on Victoria Derbyshire
Jewish Rachel, 33, told former EastEnders actress Tracy-Ann Oberman, 53, on her podcast Trolled: “I found out I was pregnant in April and that was around the time of the Boycott Rachel Riley campaign.
“Mentally, I am strong. Mentally, I can cope. I am up for this fight. It is imperative that we win.
“But when I got pregnant, you have like some chocolate and within minutes the baby is wriggling and the baby is kicking.
“And the day I was going for my scan my baby was kicking and I was excited. It was excited.
“The week of the Panorama documentary it got really [expletive] ugly. It was disgusting.”
She added: “They were exposed as anti-Semites. The Labour leadership were exposed as liars. Their followers took it personally and attacked anyone going anywhere near.
“I was very stressed and upset and my baby stopped wriggling for a couple of days. At that point you think, ‘Nah’.
“I realised that however mentally strong I am, there’s adrenaline, there’s hormones that go through your body and now I’m sharing them, I absolutely don’t need to give that to my baby.”
Rachel and other celebrities are now backing the new Don’t Feed the Trolls initiative, which is encouraging people to block trolls and stop sharing the abuse they receive with their followers.
A new report, titled Don’t Feed the Trolls, has been released by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, which found hate speech is being inadvertently spread when quoted by famous figures.
Read more: Rachel Riley hits back at trolls accusing her of wearing ‘inappropriate clothing’
Celebrities and politicians have said they will now report the worst abuse to police and pass on other examples to social media companies.
Riley shared how the advice has changed her life for the better, explaining: “I now block trolls as common practice, and have changed my settings to avoid seeing much of their output, which has made life much better from a mental health standpoint and, vitally, is not inadvertently helping to grow their audiences or feed their negativity.”
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