Dundee kick-boxer sent to jail

A WORLD champion kick-boxer from Dundee has been jailed for nine months for a campaign of control against a former partner.

Ronnie “The Shark” Clark, 32, installed spyware on Rebecca Graham’s mobile phone and tried to rule her life even after they had split, making menacing demands in emails and texts.

Clark is among the first to be prosecuted under new laws making it a crime to engage in controlling or coercive behaviour. He denied the charge but was convicted by Northallerton magistrates after a trial last month and appeared at Teesside Crown Court for sentence.

The court heard the couple met when she was 13 but their relationship did not begin until 2010 after being in contact on Facebook.

Miss Graham became pregnant and they moved to Dundee the following year, prosecutor Nigel Soppitt told the court. Problems arose in 2012 when Miss Graham accused Clark of having affairs and he called her paranoid — but the court heard he fathered a child with another woman.

Clark returned to Scotland in September 2015, and over the next two months messaged his ex about her relationships. He bought her a phone that Christmas and the software he put on showed him who she was sending texts to — and he threatened to kill a man with whom she was in touch.

On Miss Graham’s birthday, he was in touch to claim he knew where she was and where she had been.

“Effectively, there was some sort of surveillance,” said Mr Soppitt.