FA condemns online abuse of England women’s star Karen Carney

The Football Association (FA) has called on the police and social media platforms to tackle online abuse after rape and death threats were made against England and Chelsea star Karen Carney.

The BBC reports that goalscorer Carney received threats on social media after Chelsea’s 1-0 victory against Fiorentina in the first leg of the Uefa Women’s Champions League round of 16 on Wednesday night.

An Instagram user, who has since been removed, said to the midfielder: “I hope someone will rape you to death.” Carney responded by saying: “Wow some people.”

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In a statement the FA said it was “appalled” and “dismayed”. The statement said: “The FA takes such matters extremely seriously. The abuse of players on social networking sites is a serious concern and we call on the police and social media organisations to do everything they can to help tackle this growing problem.

“We provide all our senior England players with training, guidance and support on the use of social media and treat our duty of care in this regard with the utmost importance.”

A spokesperson for Instagram told BBC Sport: “We do not tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour, and the account that sent these messages has been removed from Instagram. We encourage anyone who sees content of this kind to report it via our in-app tools and our global team work 24/7 to review and remove anything that violates our Community Guidelines.”

Carney, 31, who has won 133 caps for England, will not be reporting the threats to the police, the BBC added.