How did I cope with her so long?
On character Jessica was excellent as Martha, she sounded just like her
Stalking victim of the real-life Martha relives five-year hell and fresh fears
people are still alive and might be harmed, there is a duty of care. But she seems obviously so mentally ill.
“They haven’t done enough to protect her.”
Laura claimed the similarities between Martha and her stalker were striking. She said: “It was obvious to me and to a lot of other people that she was my stalker.
“They made her a lawyer. That detail didn’t have any bearing on the story. They could have made her a doctor, or an accountant.
“The only thing they changed about her was her name. The lady Jessica who played Martha was excellent… she sounds like her, she looks like her.
“I mean, she had the same laugh, even the same slightly kind of funny waddling walk. Even when I briefly employed her, she would do the same sort of things.”
After being fired, the woman started bombarding Laura with phone calls and disparaging her to other solicitors. She then began targeting her family and friends. The “final straw” was when she reported Laura to social services.
Laura said: “She made some bizarre allegation that I was in my car driving and somehow managed to hit my son who was sitting in the back of the car in the child seat.
“Eventually it was all dropped but that’s when I went for an interim injunction. Thankfully, it worked. She didn’t defend it. We never heard any more from her.”
At the end of Baby Reindeer, Martha pleads guilty to stalking Gadd and is jailed for nine months. But Laura’s stalker insisted she has never been charged with an offence, let alone been sent to prison.
Branding the
series a “work of fiction”, she said: “That is completely untrue, very, very defamatory to me, very career-damaging.”
And last night the woman denied the Facebook messages were abusive while claiming there was no interim injunction against her as the paperwork was messed up.
Netflix have not commented on any of the characters in the series.