A TEENAGER who became the first person in Britain to be sent to prison for being a Facebook bully has spoken of her remorse.

Keeley Houghton was locked up after she posted a threatening message on the social networking site. She was described as “warped”, “nasty” and a “coward” by district judge Bruce Morgan for writing that she was going to “kill” victim Emily Moore on her profile status following a row in a pub.

But, speaking to your Worcester News yesterday, the 18-year-old insisted she was not a bully.

Miss Houghton, who had not got on with Miss Moore since the age of 14, admitted what she wrote had been “terrible”.

“I do feel bad for writing that,” she said. “I would have been very upset if I had seen a comment like that about me and it was terrible, but we have never got on.

“I understand how she felt about the comment and that it wasn’t particularly nice.”

Miss Houghton spent six weeks of her three-month sentence – imposed at Worcester Magistrates court in August – at the Eastwood Park prison in Gloucestershire, and was released last month.

“It was just a horrible experience and the first night I was in there I didn’t sleep as I didn’t know what to expect,” she said.

The unemployed teenager, of Elgar Avenue, Malvern, said she had been warned by her solicitor she could be sent to prison, but said the sentence had still come as a shock.

“He said there was a chance but I didn’t think it would happen,” she said.

Miss Houghton was accompanied in court by her mother Nicky, sister Kimberley, her step-mum and five of her friends, who gasped and cried when the sentence was read out.

“When I was able to call my Mum for the first time from prison she told me it had been in all the papers and that was just horrible and something I didn’t expect or like at all,” she said.

Miss Houghton, who has never been bullied herself, said there had been trouble between herself and Miss Moore since they were at school together, but it had been “blown out of all proportion”.

“It was a childish argument. I can’t even remember what it was about but it was a case of six of one and half a dozen of another between me and my friends, and her and her friends,” she said.

She insists she is not a bully, despite being expelled from school as a result of an incident with Miss Moore in 2005.

“It was one comment on Facebook and everyone says I am now a cyber bully. But I really didn’t mean what I had put as I had done it in a moment of anger. After the incident in the pub, I was really angry and was with friends and wrote it. But when I thought about it the next day I deleted it as I knew it was wrong. But the damage had been done and Emily had already seen it.”

Miss Houghton is now banned from contacting Miss Moore for five years and is not allowed on Facebook until the beginning of next year, although she is unsure if she will re-join.

She is looking for a job and plans to do a college course in Travel and Tourism next September.