Top academic, 63, harassed ex with f lowers and letters
AN ACADEMIC at a top university could be given a restraining order because he bombarded an ex-girlfriend with unwanted affection after they split.
Professor Rob Krams had been handed first a ‘harassment warning’, then a formal caution barring him from contacting Ausra Satiene – but still he went on to send her two bouquets of flowers.
He also sent her four letters and phoned her, claiming it was ‘Dutch culture’ to maintain good relations with a former lover.
However, Miss Satiene, 50, told police he mocked her for being of a lower social class and that she was intimidated by his letters. The divorced lecturer’s defence that she had treated him like a ‘sugar daddy’ failed to make the grade when he went on trial for harassment this week, and magistrates found him guilty.
The court had heard Krams, 63, a professor in molecular bioengineering at Imperial College London who also works as a doctor at Hammersmith Hospital, met Lithuanian health worker Miss Satiene through dating app Tinder two years ago.
They were together for a year and a half, enjoying trips abroad and eating at expensive restaurants.
But in January this year they split after arguments and disagreements over money.
When Miss Satiene complained to police about Krams continuing to contact her, officers repeatedly asked him to leave her alone.
In April he received a harassment warning and in June he was handed a formal caution. Yet he still tried to get in touch with her.
Prosecutor Simon Maughan told Hendon Magistrates’ Court on Thursday: ‘What then follows are a series of letters and a phone call to Ausra which the Crown say amounts to harassment.’ He also sent her two bouquets of flowers.
Miss Satiene gave evidence from behind a screen, saying she was intimidated by her ex-boyfriend.
She told the court his correspondence left her ‘anxious and scared’, so much so that by July she had moved address. She said: ‘I feel safer there because he does not know where I live right now.
‘I did not know what the next step would be. It made me feel terrible.
‘Treating him like a sugar daddy’
Even after the police got involved the letters were still coming … he mentioned social class and I felt that he was putting me down.’
Krams told the court he had worked in Rotterdam, Holland, before moving to a £900,000 flat in exclusive St John’s Wood, north London, several years ago.
In 2016 he met Miss Satiene. He claimed their loving relationship faltered after she began treating him like a wealthy ‘sugar daddy’ by asking him for money.
After the split he claimed she made up to 30 silent calls to him, and said he had contacted her because he was worried for his job, as she worked at the same hospital.
Krams added: ‘I sent her flowers. I am from a Dutch culture. I bought my ex- wife in Holland flowers almost every week.’
In his defence, counsel Georgia Luscombe said: ‘Sending someone a love letter after you’ve broken up may be many things but it is not harassment.’ But magistrate Susan Bright rejected this, saying: ‘We find Mr Krams guilty of the offence of harassment without violence.’
She told him he would be sentenced in a fortnight in front of Westminster magistrates. Prosecutors will argue for a restraining order at the next hearing.