pasha kovalev rachel riley

Pasha Kovalev shares fears for pregnant wife Rachel Riley over online trolling

The Strictly couple are expecting their second child together

Deputy Online Editor
April 28, 2021

Pasha Kovalev has revealed he is worried over the amount of online abuse that has been targeted towards his wife Rachel Riley, who is pregnant with their second child.

The former Strictly Come Dancing star is concerned that the trolling could affect the development of their unborn baby.

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On how the anti-Semitic abuse sent to the Countdown host has left her "stressed," Pasha told The Mirror: "I definitely can see how it stresses her. The smallest stress affects how the baby's development is going."

READ: Pasha Kovalev expresses his joy over becoming a dad again with wife Rachel Riley

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Pasha, who is already a father to 16-month-old Maven, revealed he wants to find a way to hold trolls accountable to their actions.

"If you come up to someone on the street and tell them something like that, you're probably going to get some sort of repercussion. You'd be held accountable for your actions," he said. "Online there's a limited amount of repercussion, and it opens a floodgate. It should be stopped."

© Photo: Getty Images

The couple met when they were partnered up on Strictly in 2013

Months before welcoming baby Maven into the world, Rachel revealed that at one point her unborn baby stopped moving due to the stress caused by social media trolling.

MORE: Rachel Riley melts hearts with new snap of baby Maven - and she clearly takes after Pasha Kovalev

She confessed that her baby had been "wiggling" and "kicking" as expected but ahead of the release of a BBC Panorama documentary that was damning of the Labour party, and that she had publicly endorsed, things took an "ugly" turn.

She told The Mirror: "I was very stressed and upset and my baby stopped wriggling for a couple of days. At that point you think, 'Nah'.

© Photo: Instagram

The Countdown star shared this snap to announce her second pregnancy

"I realised that however mentally strong I am, there's adrenalin, there's hormones that go through your body and now I'm sharing them, I absolutely don't need to give that to my baby."

In January 2019, the celebrity mathematician revealed she was given extra security at work after receiving abuse online over her comments about anti-Semitism.

"The more I speak, the more abuse I get, and the more abuse I get, the more I speak," she told The Times at the time. "It's got to the point where I can't look at my Twitter feed any more... it's just a constant stream."

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