Police officer is spared jail over stalking his ex

A SPURNED police officer who relentlessly stalked his former partner has been spared jail.

Nicholas De Juliis, 42, bombarded the woman with hundreds of unwanted text messages, phone calls and emails and threatened to send intimate photos of her to her new boyfriend.

The pair were together for almost seven years before splitting up. De Juliis, then a special constable with Police Scotland, began contacting her more than two years after the split and was fixated about her new relationship.

He threatened to disclose ‘intimate’ messages and photos of the woman to her new boyfriend and told her he knew where he lived.

She was terrified he was hacking into her private accounts in order to keep track of her movements because he knew she was going on trips away. The woman repeatedly begged De Juliis, who also works in banking, to stop but he continued to pester her until she blocked his number and contacted police.

De Juliis, of Renfrew, appeared at Hamilton Sheriff Court last month and admitted stalking his former partner between April and August 2018.

Sheriff Linda Nicolson ordered him to carry out 108 hours of unpaid work and banned him from contacting the woman for three years.

Sheriff Nicolson said: ‘I have to take into account the nature of the offence. The communication with this person quickly became unwelcome, inappropriate and at times simply nasty.

‘It must be marked by the imposition of a community-based order as a direct alternative to custody.’