An election candidate vying to become a Conservative councillor says he is ‘ashamed’ of a tweet in which he said his name was ‘rape’ and people would be ‘screaming it later’.
Kurt McPartland, who is standing for the Tories in the Tameside ward of Dukinfield and Stalybridge, has also apologised after he was accused of misogyny, and ‘fat-shaming’ a Labour councillor in their online election posts.
The controversial tweet, posted in 2016 from his personal account, and which is still available online but which has not been active since 2018, states: ‘Hello, my name is rape. Remember it, you’ll be screaming it later’.
In a statement to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Mr McPartland said: “I tweeted this when I was 19 nearly seven years ago when I was hanging around the wrong people, this is one of the things I’m ashamed of when I was younger, amongst many other things. I’ve clearly matured since then.”
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In the run-up to Thursday’s local elections on May 4, Mr McPartland had also shared an attack advert on Facebook about Labour councillor Eleanor Wills, one of three produced for each sitting Labour councillor in the ward, which he subsequently apologised for. He said he was sorry if it ‘came across’ as misogynistic.
The post used an out-of-date picture of Ms Wills prior to her losing weight with among a list of her achievements as cabinet member for health Tameside being branded ‘fat capital of the UK with two thirds of residents classed as overweight’.
It also criticised the high rates of teenage pregnancy and low life expectancy in the borough.
Ms Wills said the picture was taken before she later lost five stone, and it felt ‘a step too far’. She added that previous election campaigns had seen pictures shared portraying her as a donkey and trolling her appearance.
“Members of the public were contacting me, members of the community were saying it was disgusting and asking whether I’d seen it and that’s how it was drawn to my attention,” she said. Ms Wills went on to publicly challenge the post on her own Twitter page.
She added: “I generally don’t like to give oxygen to something that’s personalised with that undercurrent of misogyny but on this occasion I’d been speaking with young girls as part of the domestic abuse campaign and they’d been talking about challenging their peers about sexist behaviour.
“Misogynistic viewpoints were far more prevalent than I’d realised in younger culture to be perfectly honest, I genuinely felt duty bound to say something and call it out. It would be easier on a personal standpoint to not have.
“It absolutely infers that fat-shaming and isn’t a fair representation of me.”
She said she had received a personal apology from Mr McPartland but added: “I think if you’re looking at putting yourself forward into public life you absolutely have a responsibility of what you put out there and how you portray yourself.
“In Stalybridge where I live and represent I have had aggressive males come up and take pictures of me when I’m out at Street Fest, I have had to put complaints in to the police because of aggressive behaviour, so although I do accept an apology – had I not called this out I think it would have been allowed to continue.
“And unfortunately it has already been put out there on more than one occasion. I do accept the apology and I do hope that people understand the gravity of what they do and lessons are learnt.”
Ms Wills said the historic tweet posted by her opposition was also ‘really worrying’. “I hope that’s challenged with the powers that be in terms of what content is out there. I’m not sure in what context, if there is any, where that would ever be acceptable now,” she added.
“That’s quite shocking. I would have concerns if that was anybody within our party.”
In a post on his official candidate Facebook page, Mr McPartland said: “I would like to apologise to Eleanor for the manner in which the post was displayed.
“We used a picture that was out of date when we should have looked for a recent photo. The post was intended to display the failure of the weight programme and the problems with health in Tameside. The post did not mean to come across misogynistic and I’m sorry if it came across that way.”
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