A Sinn Féin councillor says sectarian abuse directed at his family has exposed a “deafening” silence from other political figures, while a separate case involving threats against the family of a victim of the Bloody Sunday massacre has also underlined how intimidation still haunts daily life in the north of Ireland.

Declan Lynch (pictured) said the incident happened on Saturday morning during a large Sinn Féin leaflet drop in Lisburn, when his mother and wife, who was holding their young child, were targeted by sectarian abuse.

He said: “I understand as an elected member I am going to get some sort of abuse, but to go after my family, that is where the line is drawn.”

Lynch said the abuse came from “a handful of men” gathered near a filling station, and added that he and colleague Danny Baker were also abused.

He said the response from other political figures had been strikingly absent.

“I think the lack of condemnation from other political figures and parties in Lagan Valley, if I put it nicely, their silence is deafening, which I didn’t think they would be,” he said.

Lynch also said material relating to where he lives was posted online after the incident, with clips of his local area shared on social media. Despite that, he said: “We will be going back out again canvassing, it’ll not stop us.”

A separate row has grown around the sentence imposed on a loyalist jailed for three months after being convicted of sending menacing social media messages to the McKinney brothers during the trial of a British soldier for his part in the massacre of civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday, 1972.

Mickey McKinney said the outcome did not reflect the seriousness of the threat posed by Dean Portis.

“This guy wasn’t dealt the hand he should have been dealt,” he said.

“He threatened to kill, he should have got a more severe sentence.” McKinney added: “This guy made a threat to kill us and he was sentenced on being found guilty of the misuse of social media.”

He said the case had been “played down,” and described how the threat affected him and his brothers Joe and John while they were attending court as witnesses in the case involving Soldier .

The Facebook post that led to Portis’s prosecution said: “If yous (sic) continue to target the British Armed Forces including the PSNI the consequences will be swift and deadly. Yous (sic) have been warned.”

Mr McKinney said the message frightened him and changed how he thought about travelling to court. “It scared me for sure,” he said. He added that he was “re-running our path to get to court” and thinking about where an attack might come from.

He said he and his brothers had “a few anxious nights” after receiving the messages, and he recalled retracing his steps on the way to court. “I was thinking: ‘Right, if there was somebody going to hit us, where would they come from?’” he said.

The case has also prompted criticism from lawyer Ciaran Shiels of Madden and Finucane, who complained to the Police Ombudsman about how the investigation was handled. He criticised the decision to pursue charges relating to menacing communications rather than a threat to kill, and questioned the delay in Portis’s arrest.

Mr Shiels said: “We contrast the court’s decision with the softly approach of the PSNI in Belfast, who steadfastly refused to investigate and recommend Portis for the more obvious and appropriate offence of making a threat to kill our clients.”