BENFLEET STALKER JAILED FOR CAMPAIGN OF ABUSE AGAINST EX
A stalker has been jailed after terrorising a woman, telling her the ordeal would never end until one of them was dead or he was in prison.Prosecutor Dominic Connolly told the court O’Shea, 33, of Fleet Road, Benfleet, had subjected his victim to a campaign of abuse which included threats to torch her house, blow up her car, burn her dogs and attack her with acid.
“All of this had a devastating impact on her,” said Judge Samantha Cohen.
“She has been scared, traumatised.
She says in her witness statements that she is anxious all the time, that her sleep has been affected.” In one incident, she arrived home to find him asleep in her home.
When she asked him to leave, said Mr Connolly, “he became verbally abusive, shouting in her face and calling her derogatory names.
“He spat on her shoulder and her face, picked up a brick, raised it above his head and insinuated that he was going to throw it at her.” After leaving, he texted her: “Check your car.
Now get me nicked for something.” When she went outside, her car window had been smashed and there were stones inside it.
O’Shea was arrested and bailed with a condition not to contact the victim, which he ignored.
She “received constant telephone contact from the defendant, from his number and from withheld numbers,” said Mr Connolly.
“The messages were derogatory and threatening in their nature.” In one, O’Shea wrote: “Your house will be gone for good.” In another, he was “threatening to attend her home with acid.” She went back to police and made a further statement about the ongoing abuse, but it still continued.
In the space of 17 days in September, O’Shea contacted her by phone 675 times.
Police were scrambled to the woman’s home when O’Shea claimed to have broken into the house and said “he was going to burn it down, burn the dogs and kill you and myself.” He was arrested and – “somewhat surprisingly”, said Judge Cohen – again released on bail, whereupon the abuse still carried on.
O’Shea told the victim he had planted a tracker on her car and then started showing up and harassing her.
“Pray I don’t bump into you,” said one of many threatening messages which continued to arrive.
O’Shea also created a fake Instagram account name and used that to harass her.
It was during this period that he entered the woman’s garden and “threw stones at her, hitting her all over her body,” said Mr Connolly.
O’Shea tearfully read a letter to the court via prison video link, saying: “I am truly sorry for my actions and regret everything that I have done.” He said he had lost a cousin to murder and seen a friend killed in front of him and had been struggling with his mental health.
“I have been suffering lately deep down and never told anyone,” he said.
“Really I should be telling her this.
Really, I should be telling her how sorry I am.
But today I have to explain to the court.
Never in my life did I think I would be in this case.” Judge Cohen told him: “In this case, Mr O’Shea, it appears to me that you have comprehensively failed to act with the grace and dignity that is appropriate.
“Instead what you have done, over a period of many, many months in total, is give reign to your anger and frustration and you have revealed you have a self-indulgent, nasty streak.” She sentenced him to two years and eleven months in prison.
She also imposed a ten-year restraining order banning him from contacting the victim.
