Stalker harassed her ex over ‘love contract’
AN obsessed interior designer turned her ex-boyfriend’s life into a ‘living nightmare’ after accusing him of breaking a ‘love contract’.
Lina Tantash, 43, embarked on a ‘sinister and sustained’ campaign against Jarlath Rice, bombarding him with messages, ordering hundreds of pounds of pizza to his office and hiring a private detective to probe his life.
She accused Mr Rice of breaching a 21-clause deal in which she loaned him money in return for him providing the intimacy missing from her life.
But Tantash now faces jail after being convicted of stalking at Brighton Magistrates’ Court.
The ‘ highly intelligent’ university- educated project manager believed she was locked in a tenyear relationship with the 50-year-old Irish filmmaker. But Mr Rice told police he was desperate when he signed two detailed quasi-legal documents in an attempt to escape her clutches.
The conditions included agreeing to marry her within a year, not to change his phone numbers and to always answer her calls or call her back within 15 minutes.
The extraordinary saga began in 2007 when Tantash and Mr Rice had a fling in Dublin. Over the following years Mr Rice fought to escape her attentions, eventually moving to Brighton to work as a college tutor.
Tantash, then a project manager at prestigious Trinity College Dublin, soon followed, taking up a new role in London.
Her campaign of harassment then stepped up a gear as she suspected Mr Rice was in a new relationship with a colleague.
Mr Rice and the woman received thousands of calls, and Tantash, who describes herself online as a creative design manager, was recorded telling her love rival she looked like a horse and quizzing a third colleague about their relationship.
She also sent abusive emails from anonymous accounts. In one she told the woman she had ‘disgusting, frizzy hair, skin like curdled yoghurt and buck teeth’ and that she hoped she had a ‘heartbroken, horrid end’.
Tantash was accused of ordering unwanted pizzas and taxis and hiring a private detective.
Prosecuting, Dominic Dudkowski said Mr Rice was ‘at his wits’ end’ when he signed the contracts linked to £50,000 Tantash claimed she had lent the filmmaker. He said some was compensation after she caused problems with a contract.
In her defence, Tantash said she came from a stable, upper middle class family but that love was missing from her life. She claimed to have paid Mr Rice’s sizeable debts and supported his career in return for a romantic commitment.
But District Judge Amanda Kelly convicted her of stalking and warned her she faces jail.
‘Miss Tantash became utterly obsessed with Mr Rice,’ she said. ‘She embarked upon a sinister and sustained campaign of stalking behaviour that became a living nightmare for him.’ Tantash, of Croydon, South London, was convicted of stalking Mr Rice and the woman from July 2015 to February this year. She will be sentenced next month.