A TEENAGER has appeared in court charged with threatening to kill another girl on the social networking website Facebook.

Keeley Houghton wrote threatening and abusive comments on the site, which is used by millions of people all over the world.

The 18-year-old has a history of targeting the girl. In 2005 she was expelled from school for assaulting her, and in 2007 was found guilty of causing criminal damage to her home.

On Friday, July 10, this year, she approached the girl in The Vault Inn pub and put her arm around her.

The girl said she would call the police if Houghton, of Elgar Avenue, Malvern, did not leave her alone, to which Houghton replied: “I’ll give you something to ring the police about.”

Matt Dodson, prosecuting at Worcester Magistrates Court, said their history went back to high school.

He said: “The injured party was bullied by the defendant and her friends while at school. The defendant was in fact expelled as a result of a certain incident and in 2005 was found guilty of assault.”

Abusive comments appeared on Facebook two days after the incident in the pub.

Houghton had written that she was going to murder the girl.

In interview she claimed it was late at night and she was drunk when she wrote on the site, but the comments had actually been written at 4pm.

Houghton pleaded guilty to a charge of harassment.

Defending herself in court, she told magistrates she had been trying to apologise to the victim in the pub and it was a misunderstanding.

She said: “I don’t know why I’m here for trying to apologise. She threatened to call the police and all I was doing was saying sorry.”

The bench asked for a pre-sentence report. Houghton was released on conditional bail and told to return to court for sentencing on Friday, August 21.