Stalker guilty of bugging his ex-partner’s house
AN OBAN man who planted a recording device in his ex-partner’s house to listen secretly to her conversations, has pleaded guilty to stalking charges at Oban sheriff court.
Piotr Jakubiec, 42, placed a tape recorder underneath Agnieszka Sarbiewska’s kitchen table and listened to her conversations between December 10 last year and January 7 this year.
He initially pleaded not guilty to the charges of turning up at her workplace uninvited, repeatedly following her at various locations around Oban, and making a copy of a key to her property to gain entry and fix a recording device to her kitchen table.
Jakubiec then changed his plea to guilty after almost five hours of evidence was heard on September 16.
He also pleaded guilty to breaking his bail conditions by speaking to Ms Sarbiewska at Oban sheriff court on August 20.
Jakubiec, of Highland Apartments, Oban, had admitted planting the recording device when first interviewed by police, despite his initial not guilty plea, saying he had done so due to concerns about the couple’s child.
With the couple both using Polish interpreters throughout the trial, the court heard that Ms Sarbiewska had become suspicious that Jakubiec had been recording her after a female friend had phoned her to say that details of a private, personal conversation between the two women had been revealed to her by her friend’s partner.
She said: ‘I thought that Piotr had some recording device in the house.
‘Right after she phoned me, I looked under the kitchen table as this was where we held the conversation. I found two black pieces of tape which were not there before.’
The black adhesive tape had been used to hold the recording device in place.
She also told the court that on different occasions Jakubiec had driven past her house, arrived at her place of work, and on one occasion she had seen him pass her on the A85, turn his car around and begin to follow her in his vehicle.
Breaking down in tears when procurator fiscal Eoin McGinty asked how this made her feel, she replied: ‘ Very, very bad. I can’t really express this.’
Deferring sentence for background reports until October 14, Sheriff Ruth Anderson QC told Jakubiec: ‘This has been a very serious matter.
‘I want to ensure all options are open to me when I pass sentence,’ she added.
This has been a very serious matter
Sheriff Ruth Anderson, QC