Man convicted of harassing ex-girlfriend on social media
Discovering that the passwords for his ex-girlfriend's social media accounts were saved in his laptop, a 23-year-old man accessed her accounts for four years to monitor her after they had broken up.
From 2013 to 2017, the man accessed her Facebook and Instagram accounts at least 129 times. He cannot be named to protect his ex-girlfriend's identity.
She discovered his acts only in 2017 when she received a message through her Instagram account and opened the message thread to discover a list of messages she had not written.
She realised her Facebook account had been breached after discovering an unknown contact added to her friend's list.
He stated that he wanted to know who she was conversing with.
In November 2017, he became interested in a girl called "Nicol". However, Nicol rebuffed his advances as she was already in a relationship with a "Jedrek".
The man wanted to test Jedrek's fidelity towards Nicol, so he sent Jedrek a Facebook friend request with his ex-girlfriend's Facebook account.
The man and Jedrek began chatting on Facebook and Instagram.
While still impersonating his ex-girlfriend, he also suggested they have sex, and Jedrek agreed. The man then stopped conversing with Jedrek.
When the man's ex-girlfriend logged into her Facebook and Instagram accounts and discovered the messages with Jedrek, she felt harassed.
Her ex-boyfriend was convicted of eight charges under the Computer Misuse and Cybersecurity Act, one charge of unlawful stalking causing harassment, with 87 other charges taken into consideration.
Yesterday, he was given 21 months of supervised probation, 180 hours of community service and has to remain indoors from 10pm to 6am every day.
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