Shamed head teacher had a history of harassment
Stalker jailed for targeting ex-partner had led some of region’s top private schools
AFORMER head teacher of two Midland independent schools, who has been jailed for stalking, had a history of harassing women, it has been revealed.
Behind the seemingly eccentric facade, Russell Hollins harboured a simmering resentment of women and believed they were inferior to men.
The women who shared his life, no matter how briefly, were subjected to a relentless campaign of cruelty when attempting to break free from his clutches.
This week, Hollins, at the helm of a string of elite private schools, was exposed as a serial stalker.
He is now starting a two-year jail term for putting his ex-partner, Sally Eggington, through hell.
Harassment had become an unhealthy habit for the 71-year-old, formerly from Rugby.
Hollins has previous convictions for stalking two other former partners and has breached restraining orders on a seven occasions.
His refusal to accept relationships cost him his teaching career.
He was head at independent Wolverhampton Royal Junior School and later Treliske Prep School in Truro.
Hollins was also deputy head at Coventry’s King Henry VIII School and headmaster of Chapter House Prep School at Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate, Little Ouseburn, Yorkshire.
His latest victim, Ms Edgington, has dubbed the warped former head a “manipulative, intellectually arrogant misogynist” after enduring nine months of torment.
Hollins’ Facebook site – one of three he had – still carries traces of the war he waged after being spurned, and of his obsessive character.
He repeatedly posts: “Why are you wearing a wedding ring when you have been a widow for many years?”
He announces: “I think that Alfred Hitchcock would have created a wonderful film on your hedonistic but complex life of intrigue.”
He dubs Ms Edgington “unscrupulous”.
Hollins also tried to get Ms Edgington sacked from her teaching job at a Warwickshire school.
He subjected her to a flood of messages, using different names and numbers when she attempted to block him on social media or by text.
And he targeted her family when he could no longer reach her – despite being arrested and served with a non-molestation order.
On one occasion, Hollins, who used his diagnosis of prostate cancer as emotional blackmail, travelled to Ms Edgington’s bungalow where he uprooted pot plants and threw rubbish on the drive. In his panic to flee, he almost ran over a neighbour trying to photograph the evidence.
Among the flood of messages from Hollins was a plea offering Ms Edgington £25,000 if she would have him back. Others simply spewed out threats and insults.
At Exeter Crown Court, Hollins, formerly of Rugby, but now living in Topham, Devon, where he cared for his 96-year-old mother, admitted stalking and breaching a nonmolestation order.
As well as the prison term, he was handed an indefinite restraining order, banning any contact with Ms Edgington her employers or family, and prohibiting him from going to a large area of Warwickshire around Bulkington, Bedworth and Coventry.
Judge David Evans told the pensioner: “You were prohibited by a court order from any further contact but for week after week, and month after month, you defied that order.
“She hoped the order would change your ways. You were sometimes pleading for her to resume contact but you were also abusing her, insulting her and belittling her in messages. With one exception, she did not reply. You used your ongoing ill health as a tool to manipulate her emotions in your favour. You made derogatory assertions about her to others and false allegations.
“You contacted her employers with the obvious intention of losing her her job. You have caused her very great distress and damaged her life. The stalking was clear evidence of some sort of inflated selfregard. You had a sense of entitlement and an expectation of subservience from her.
“The messages were cruel. She was the third woman who you have harassed over the past decade. This was a sustained course of quite deliberate behaviour.”