I’ll never be able to escape from my stalker hell
TV host too scared to return home after fixated neighbour walks free
A TV news presenter yesterday said there would be ‘no escape’ from her stalker as he walked free from court.
Isla Traquair earlier told how next-door neighbour Jonathan Barrett’s ‘campaign of vengeance’ was worse than ‘confronting murderers’ in her professional life.
The former ITV and Channel 5 news anchor, 42, was forced to flee her rural home under cover of darkness after ‘ weird’ Barrett became obsessed with her soon after she moved there in 2021.
Addressing a sentencing hearing via videolink yesterday, she wept as she told magistrates the ‘ insidious effect’ of his behaviour left her ‘riddled with anxiety’.
‘I have been to some of the most dangerous places in the world, confronting murderers,’ said Miss Traquair. ‘But I have never felt as scared. I didn’t feel safe to leave my house or walk my dog. I didn’t feel safe to wear certain clothes and didn’t even feel safe inside my own home.’
Salisbury magistrates ordered Barrett, 54, to complete 300 hours of community service for his six-month campaign against Miss Traquair – the maximum possible. He must also pay £715 costs.
In a statement after the hearing, the Aberdeen-born journalist and podcast host called for a ‘complete overhaul’ of the way the justice system handles stalking cases and said Barrett should have been jailed. She said: ‘The court proceedings may have ended but my ordeal hasn’t. The only thing that would have made me feel safe temporarily is if he was jailed.’
Miss Traquair said suspected stalkers should be psychologically assessed, and it ‘should be absolutely standard that they undergo treatment if found guilty’.
She added: ‘The whole system needs an overhaul – from police training to sentencing. The solution should not be for victims to run and hide.’
Barrett was convicted of a count of stalking, after claim ing that it was she who was ‘fixated’ on him.
The maximum sentence is six months, or ten years for stalking causing fear of violence. But a six-month term can only be imposed for a single offence.
Miss Traquair suffered nightmares and panic attacks after ‘obsessed’ Barrett stared her bedroom and ‘chainsawed’ a bush in her garden, his trial heard last month.
He climbed a garden wall to enter her home near Corsham, Wiltshire, before offering to make her a sandwich.
Miss Traquair spent thousands of pounds on fences and security cameras before eventually fleeing. The house is now rented out because she is too scared to return.
On his arrest in July last year, Barrett told officers he thought Miss Traquair ‘petty’ and claimed ‘because of her job, she knew which buttons to press with the police’.
He also claimed his victim had become ‘disturbed’ from working on her recent true crime podcast, The Storyteller: Violent Delights, which he admitted knowing about from researching her online.
‘System needs overhauling’