LONDON – A British man who stalked his girlfriend using social networking sites and posted sexual images of her on the internet was on Monday jailed for four years.
Judge Anthony Callaway said Shane Webber, 23, was guilty of a “gross violation” of Ruth Jeffery’s privacy after he hacked into her email account and sent naked images of her to family and friends while the two were going out.
Webber, from Nottingham in central England, admitted one count of harassment at an earlier hearing at a magistrates’ court in Southampton, the town where Jeffery lives.
“I am extremely pleased with the outcome,” Jeffery said after the decision.
“The maximum sentence in a magistrates’ court will never make up for the hurt he had put me through but I am pleased I can now put it behind me.”
“I was absolutely devastated when I found out it was him. I could not believe it was Shane. I did not want to believe it.”
Unemployed Webber bombarded the 22-year-old student for over three years and even posted online using her username, telling fellow male students that she was attracted to them.
The couple met at school in Nottingham before Jeffery moved with her family to Southampton.
On passing sentence, the judge said: “This was a gross breach of trust against a former girlfriend who you had known for a number of years and who was pregnant with your child.”
“The type of harassment represents a gross violation of her privacy and in circumstances nobody, man, woman, let alone a youngster at university, should be obliged to experience.”
Jeffery said that she aborted the baby due to the stress of the ordeal.