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The minister’s wife with a newborn baby has recounted how she felt “raped” after a dirty diaper was sent to her home address.
The tracked package was addressed to her with the message: “Better check and see what your husband has been up to …”
Cornelius-Mercer, 40, who is on maternity leave after giving birth to her third daughter Audrey in June, has reported the incident to the police.
She said the level of abuse her husband receives at work was “off the scale” with regular death threats and reports to the police at least once a week.
She told the Standard: “It was in one of those plastic bags. I started to pull it out of the bag and then the smell hit me and I immediately realized what it was and dropped it.
“It is the diaper of a baby with poo, but it is not like a diaper that has been used. So I’m thinking ‘OMG how a grown person shit in a diaper and sent it to me’?
“It’s really sinister because they sent it to me, they sent it to my home address.
The parcel sent by mail
/ @ JohnnyMercerUK / Twitter )“I’m thinking … do people know that we just had a baby and is it a reference to us in that way?”
Her husband, the MP from Plymouth Moor View, was with her and took the diaper to throw it outside.
Ms. Cornelius-Mercer added: “I haven’t stopped washing my hands. I didn’t want to pick up my baby, you just feel dirty, violated and disgusting.
“You are trying to maintain a safe, clean and sterile environment. And the next thing you know, you’re standing in your kitchen with a bunch of shit from someone else.
“It is really distressing. Besides, I’m still quite hormonal … It won’t take much to bother me. And that would have bothered me on the best of days. It is wrong on many levels.
“It feels like someone has planned to come to my house and take me to my kitchen in my safe space in my little bubble where here we are just Johnny and Felicity.
Felicity Cornelius-Mercer with her husband and baby
/ Felicity Cornelius-Mercer )“Here, he is not a government minister. We are a normal family with normal children who do normal things. ”
The couple also have two other daughters named Amalie, 11, and Joey, 7, who were at school when the incident occurred.
Cornelius-Mercer said she thought the post could have been sent in response to the vote on soccer player Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign.
She added: “We hope the abuse hits the office, I’m used to being told to hang himself over Brexit and being told he’s a child killer over free school meals.
“Every deputy has to stand on the front line and literally take bullet, bullet after bullet, bullet after bullet for his useless government.
“But the public doesn’t see that, they just see a government representative and they think he must be some kind of child killer, he wants to starve the children.”
Mercer had his Foreign Operations Bill, legislation to curb prosecutions of current and former military personnel, passing through Parliament around the same time.
She added: “Was he going to risk losing his job that night and then disappointing all the veterans and the reason he entered politics in the first place?
“No, so it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how politics works, people vote with their government because they really have no other choice and they have to take these bullets, if they want to push the agenda that interests them.
“Everything in politics is compensation and I didn’t know about this before.”
Ms. Cornelius-Mercer said that she had been concerned for the safety of her family and urged people to think twice before abusing MP’s relatives.
She added: “I just urge people to remember that politicians are people, and they have families and these families are just doing everything they can to support the people they are proud of, be it their father or brother or mother or sister. . or daughter and stop for a minute.
“My girls, they love their dad and are very proud of him and I don’t want them to see something like that again. Thank God they weren’t here. ”
When asked what he would say to the person who sent him the email, he replied: “It doesn’t change anything, you are not Greta Thunberg up there with your speaker making a difference. You’re mailing shit. “
The family lives on the outskirts of Mr. Mercer’s constituency due to death threats and to keep their children away from any political abuse at the school gates.
Mr. Mercer tweeted images of the diaper and added: “I do not make this material public because I want sympathy, I am privileged.
“But I think people should be aware of what it’s really like to get involved in politics in 2020 in Britain.”
The Standard has contacted Devon and Cornwall Police for comment.
