Kerrie Essex Baker’s ‘vile’ video mocking disabled kids sparks huge outcry
Kerrie #Kerrie
An influencer from Sandbach has been condemned after her ‘vile’ mocking of disabled children. Kerrie Baker, known as Kerrie Essex on TikTok, compared youngsters born with disabilities to ‘vegetables’ during a live video on the platform with her partner Danny.
The two were discussing abortion when the conversation turned to disabled children. She was also seen pulling faces to mock youngsters with severe disabilities and both of them burst into fits of laughter throughout the video.
They were widely condemned across social media and a petition was launched urging TikTok to remove Kerrie’s account, which had more than half a million followers. Following the backlash, the pair released apology videos.
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During the video, Kerrie said: “Unless you’ve not consented or your baby is literally going to be a vegetable and have no life then fine. A vegetable, yeah, you know what I’m saying – can’t walk, cant talk, just sat there. Like they put them on live and they’re just sat there like that….”
She followed this by pulling a face in an attempt to mock disabled children, after which Danny turned his head away from the camera laughing. Kerrie laughed as well before telling viewers ‘if you don’t like it, f*** off’.
The pair continued to laugh throughout the video with Kerrie making faces several times. She then tried to row back, saying ‘sorry’ and that she doesn’t ‘think before speaking’.
The comments section was awash with people criticising the pair. Viewers branded her comments ‘sickening’, ‘vile’ and ‘horrible’.
A petition was later launched by Change.Org user Donna Willis calling for Kerrie’s account to be deactivated. It has received more than 8,000 signatures in just a matter of days.
The petition says: “Kerrie is a female on TikTok with a huge following. She was on live abusing disabled children, calling them cabbages, and ugly, hanging b*******, and no one should bring them into the world.
“She then went on to hysterically laugh about her mimicking of disabled kids. This is disgusting and it has affected millions of people on TikTok.”
A message was shared by multiple people across Facebook urging people to sign the petition.
It said: “This vile person who has many accounts – Kerrie Essex/Kerrie Essex Baker has over 500k followers on TikTok and nearly 100k on Instagram and believes it’s acceptable to mock disabled children.
“This is a mother, and one of her children is autistic. She has called them cabbage children, vegetables, ugly and said she would give it up for adoption if she had a severely disabled child.
“We cannot stand back and let people like this have a large platform and get away with such disgusting comments.”
Following the backlash, Kerrie released another video saying she was ‘utterly sorry’, adding that it ‘takes a lot’ for her to apologise and admitting that she knows she’s ‘wrong’.
She added: “A wise woman told me today ‘it doesn’t make you strong being a hard face, it makes you strong owning your s*** and being sorry’.
“I genuinely want to say I’m so sorry for how many people I’ve affected. I’ve spoken to parents today and I’m genuinely sorry at the way I made people feel. Every single thing that I’ve said, that was vile and horrible.”
She went on to claim that it ‘ain’t the person’ she is. She added that there was ‘not more’ that she could say apart from that she was ‘sorry’.
Kerrie added: “You don’t have to forgive me. I want you to go to bed tonight knowing I’m genuinely sorry for what I’ve said.”
Danny also posted a video in which he apologised, saying: “It should have been worded different on the other video and Kerrie has apologised for that, we never meant to cause anyone any hurt or upset.”
The original video has since disappeared from the platform and Kerrie’s TikTok and Instagram accounts can no longer be accessed. It is not clear whether she took them down herself or if they were deactivated by the social media firms.
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