A 21-year-old Conservative campaigner scheduled a Twitter thread after her apparent suicide which alleged sexual assaults at party conference
- Conservative campaigner Jade Smith scheduled a series of tweets citing "bullying and harassment" in the party prior her apparent suicide Sunday.
- Smith's tweets alleged sexual harassment at the Conservative Party conference from "creepy old men".
- "There is a reason why we don't feel safe at conference," she wrote.
- Her Twitter page has since been suspended along with the original tweets. However, their text was preserved by the Guido Fawkes political blog.
- In 2015, a young Conservative activist called Eliott Johnson killed himself, and accused the party of "bullying and betrayal".
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A 21-year-old Conservative Party campaigner scheduled a series of tweets to coincide with her apparent suicide. The posts allege sexual assault and bullying from members of the party.
Jade Smith was from Teesside in North East England and made headlines last year after an interview with the BBC in which she showed a leg tattoo which read "I love Boris Johnson."
Read more: 3 things we learned at Boris Johnson's Conservative Party Conference
Her body was found by police near cliffs in the town of Saltburn.
Police told Business Insider that they were called shortly after 7 p.m. on Sunday and found the body of a woman.
"The woman's death is not being treated as suspicious," a spokesman for Cleveland Police told Business Insider.
Following her death, a series of tweets scheduled by Smith were released at noon on Wednesday.
The timing of the tweets correlated with Prime Minister Boris Johnson's speech at the Conservative Party's annual conference.
Read more: Boris Johnson is trying to force the EU into rejecting a Brexit deal
Her Twitter page has since been suspended, and the tweets are not accessible. But the full text of the the twitter thread was published by the Guido Fawkes political blog.
"Back in 2015/2016 I tried to kill myself several times because of the tory party," said Smith in the tweets. ("Tory" is a synonym for Conservative in the UK.)
The tweets call out the party for "bullying and harassment." Smith says she worried about "creepy old men" and sexual assault at party conferences.
"I've always received abuse for being a tory. But the abuse we recieve from each other and the older people in our associations is what takes it too far."
Smith said she was institutionalized previously for the "bullying and harassment" she received, and said she was "stalked" by reporters while still a teenager.
Commenting on the behaviour of Conservative Party members at a party conference she said:
"We shouldn't have to be worried that our friends are going to be raped at conference or at the very least sexually assaulted."
"We shouldn't have to put up with creepy weird old men masturating over us or grabbing us to go and chat to their friends and try to take us home at the end of the night."
"There is a reason why we don't feel safe at conference," she said. She did not provide specifics of the incidents.
A spokesman for the Conservative Party was not immediately able to comment.
Smith hoped that her tweets would act as a force for change within the Conservative Party.
"This is the last time I'll ever have a platform to ask them to change, to beg them for young peoples sake to change."
Simon Clarke, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland said Smith was a "remarkable person and she will be very much missed".
In 2015 another young Conservative Party member Eliott Johnson, also 21 at the time, killed himself on a railway line in Bedfordshire.
Read more: A Conservative Party campaigner allegedly bullied at least 13 youth activists.
According to the Guardian Johnson addressed a letter to his "bullies and betrayers" prior to taking his own life.
In the letter he accused former Conservative Party parliamentary candidate Mark Clarke of bullying him.
"I have been bullied by Mark Clarke and betrayed by Andre Walker," he wrote in the letter as cited by the Guardian.
In the letter Johnson claimed he was forced to turn his back on his friends and questioned his future in politics.
"Where can I even go from here?" he wrote.
Clarke was known as the "Tatler Tory" and was suspended from the party following the Johnson's death.