A Summary Court magistrate has sentenced a man with mental health issues who was convicted of stalking and harassing his ex-wife to 270 hours of community service and, in an unrelated charge, fined him $300 for operating a generator that later burned and damaged a property in George Town.
The defendant had been found guilty of the stalking and harassment offences following a trial in 2022, and of operating the generator illegally earlier this year.
The court had heard that one form the stalking took was washing his ex-wife’s car at night without her knowledge or permission. The woman had told the court that, to make sure she wasn’t imagining things, she would deliberately drive her car through muddy puddles to make it dirty so she could see if someone had washed it overnight.
She had also been receiving notes on her doorstep and would resort to peeking out her windows at night to see if anyone was outside, she had told the court during the trial.
Magistrate Vanessa Allard, while delivering the sentences Monday, said the victim had suffered “considerable distress” as a result of the various incidents of harassment and stalking.
800 pages worth of emails
The court had heard at the 2022 trial that the defendant had sent numerous emails – amounting to a total of 800 pages – not just to his ex-wife, but to their children, to the woman’s employers and colleagues, to members of the Judicial Administration and the attorney general’s chambers.
Allard said those emails made “explicit reference” to the victim, while others were about COVID-19. Even when warned by police about the emails, the defendant continued to send them, the court had heard.
Because of how widely the emails were distributed, the magistrate said, this took the seriousness of offence of “using an ICT network to abuse/annoy/harass” into a higher category for sentencing, with a starting point of nine months in prison.
The level of distress his stalking activities had caused the victim, Allard said, had also increased the level of culpability on the part of the defendant, bringing the starting point of sentencing for that offence to between 18 and 30 months.
However, the magistrate opted not to impose a custodial sentence, having taken into consideration a report by a Department of Community Rehabilitation officer that stated the defendant’s actions were likely linked to his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, for which he is not being treated and which he does not accept.
“As a result, his symptoms of paranoia and delusions persist,” the report noted.
It stated that while in custody previously, he had required hospitalisation, and that he “may be very vulnerable to further deterioration during another period of custody”.
As a result, Allard sentenced the defendant to 120 hours of community service for the harassment over an ICT network charge and another 150 hours of community service for the stalking offence – to be conducted consecutively over a period of 12 months.
She also ordered him not to contact his ex-wife by any means and to stay at least 100 yards from her and from her home.
Generator use
In relation to the illegal use of the generator, Allard fined him $300.
Asked to comment on a fire that had reportedly started with his generator, the defendant told Allard he had been on his phone and not paying attention while filling the generator, and “the gas spilled over and caught fire, and the room got destroyed and some of the structure to the adjoining unit”.
In August this year, more than 20 people in the tenement yard were displaced by the fire that started when the generator caught fire.
The defendant told the court the generator had been destroyed in the fire and he was now using solar energy for power.
The magistrate noted that he had been issued a cease-and-desist order about the generator on 29 Sept. 2022, and had appeared in court earlier this year on this matter. Despite that court appearance, he continued to use the generator right up until the fire in August, which destroyed it and damaged property.
Allard said sentencing in the case had been delayed because, following the trial, the matter had been referred to the Mental Health Court, but was now returning to her court.
Derogatory comments to magistrate
After passing the sentence on Monday, the magistrate addressed what she described as derogatory statements made about her by the defendant, who represented himself in court, in a six-page written submission he handed in prior to being sentenced.
“They are offensive. They are demeaning. … They attack my personal character. They attack my professional character. They attack my integrity. … They attack my alleged nationality, which is wrong. They attack my sex. They attack my race. They attack my person,” the magistrate said.
Allard said the allegations about her by the defendant had echoed similar comments he had made during his trial, which had prompted the then Chief Justice Sir Anthony Smellie to write to him stating there was no basis to those allegations and “no justification for the disparagement”.
She said his submission to the court on Monday had accused her “in very vivid terms” of having no integrity.
The comments seemed to have been submitted to the court to derail that morning’s sentencing process, Allard said.
She added that she had decided to respond “out loud” in court to his submission to make it clear that the unfounded allegations made in his submission had not affected the sentence she had passed.
Editor’s note: The Compass has opted not to name the defendant due to his mental health issues.
Related Videos
