Tory councillor's wife jailed for Southport tweet helped obtain British citizenship for family of Nigerian GP who hails her as the 'kindest British person I know'
The mother jailed for a racist tweet after the Southport massacre has been praised as 'the kindest British person I know' by a Nigerian GP.
Childminder Lucy Connolly lost her appeal this week to be freed from a 31-month sentence for her online rant about migrants.
Her Conservative councillor husband Ray Connolly said that his wife was 'a good person…not a far-right thug' but judges ruled the young mother must remain behind bars.
And now Nigerian GP Dr Hene Enyi has added her voice of support for the childminder, who looked after her young daughter.
Dr Enyi revealed Mrs Connolly had gone out of her way to help with her family's application for British citizenship, even providing character references.
Dr Enyi said: 'Lucy is simply the loveliest, kindest British person I know. My mum and dad in Nigeria know all about her because I speak about her all the time.
'She was so good to us when we arrived here from Nigeria. She loved my daughter like her own child.'
She told the Telegraph: 'We used to joke 'how do you make any money as a childminder?', because she was always buying gifts for the children.
'As well as my daughter she looked after children from Bangladesh and Pakistan. This is not a racist person who has anything against people from different races.'
Mrs Connolly, 42, had appealed against her sentence at the Royal Courts of Justice, describing how news of the Southport murders of three children at a dance class had triggered her anxiety caused when her baby son, Harry, died as the result of a hospital blunder 13 years earlier.
Her tweet, viewed 310,000 times before she deleted it three-and-a-half hours later, read: 'Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the b******* for all I care...if that makes me racist so be it.' There was serious violent unrest across Britain following the Southport murders.
After three senior judges dismissed her appeal on Tuesday, saying the tweet represented 'an incitement to serious violence', her husband said: 'Lucy posted one nasty tweet when she was upset and angry about three little girls who were brutally murdered in Southport.
'She realised the tweet was wrong and deleted it within four hours. That did not mean Lucy was a 'far right thug'.' Mr Connolly said his wife's incarceration at HMP Drake Hall, Staffordshire – nine months so far - had been 'very hard, particularly on our 12-year-old girl'.
Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned Britain was 'losing its reputation for free speech' over people being arrested by police 'simply for something we say'.
Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick asked: 'How on earth can you spend longer in prison for a tweet than violent crime?' saying that 'shoplifters with hundreds of prior convictions have avoided prison, a domestic abuser with 52 prior offences got off with just a suspended sentence, as did a paedophile with 110,000 indecent images of children'.
And Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, asked 'how can it be right for Lucy to have been condemned to spend more than two-and-a-half years in jail for a single tweet when members of grooming gangs who plead guilty to the sexual exploitation of children get lower sentences?' He said: 'Lucy should be at home with her 12-year-old daughter and husband, not rotting in jail.'
It is expected that she will not be released before she has completed two fifths of her sentence, which will be in August.
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