Ex-police officer made more than 70 abusive phone calls
An ex-police?officer and council worker who sent a barrage of abusive text messages and made more than 70 calls to a former colleague has been handed a suspended jail sentence.
Claire Horsley, aged 37, targeted her victims after being sacked by Walsall Council.
She also picked on two police officers who lived near her home in Little Haywood, Stafford, and her ex-husband's new wife.
She was sentenced to six months' imprisonment suspended for a year when she appeared before Burton magistrates yesterday. The court also issued six restraining orders banning her from going near her victims.
Horsley was found guilty after a trial at Cannock last month of three cases of harassment without violence and three offences of witness intimidation. She had denied the charges.
The court heard she had recently been through a difficult marriage break up and divorce, followed by her sacking from the council. Horsley, who had no previous convictions, began working at Walsall Council in 2006 after leaving Leicestershire Police Force in 2002.
She became 'paranoid' when two West Midlands Police officers came to live near her home in St Mary's Road and, despite not knowing the pair, made 'completely unfounded' complaints to the force about them, said Mrs Moira Bell, prosecuting.
Former colleague Joanne Mellor-Shaw had befriended Horsley and took her in briefly during her marital problems but then found herself on the wrong end of abusive texts and calls when their relationship cooled.
Horsley visited the home of Mrs Mellor-Shaw's elderly mother, pounding on the windows, and made 'distressing' calls to her ex-husband's new wife at her place of work, sometimes pretending to be other people.
Horsley had unsuccessfully claimed that she was the real victim of harassment, alleging she was bullied by both Mrs Mellor-Shaw and one of the police officers. Mr Paul Cliff, defending, said: "This was not offending carried out through malicious spite. She struggled to realise the impact on her victims. She felt she had a valid cause of complaint."
For periods during 2012/13 she had been detained under the mental health act, the court heard. Magistrates were told she had suffered an acute stress reaction to her industrial tribunal at work.
Mr Cliff revealed she had now put her home on the market and was intending to make a new life away from Staffordshire, hopefully in Scotland.
Horsley, who has been in custody for 10 weeks, was also ordered to pay a total of £1,520 court costs.
