Emily Maitlis: 20-year stalker hell strained my marriage
EMILY Maitlis yesterday attacked the justice system after a stalker who has targeted her for over 20 years was able to harass her from his jail cell.
The BBC Newsnight presenter said she felt ‘let down’ that Edward Vines could send her letters from prison.
And she revealed his campaign of harassment had put her marriage under strain, upset her children and affected her work.
Vines, 47, has stalked Miss Maitlis, also 47, since they were at Cambridge University together.
He also wrote letters to her mother and to her BBC office, and made repeated references to the murder of BBC news presenter Jill Dando, Oxford Crown Court heard yesterday. He was first jailed for four months for harassment in 2002. He was then given a further three-year prison sentence in September 2016 for continuing to pester Miss Maitlis.
However, he persisted in contacting the presenter while behind bars – leading a judge to blast a prison governor over the ‘scandal’ as he jailed Vines again for 45 months yesterday.
The stalker first became obsessed with Miss Maitlis when the pair studied at Cambridge in 1995, although they never went out as a couple.
His campaign has lasted more than 20 years and he has had numerous restraining orders taken out against him.
Miss Maitlis did not attend court yesterday but provided a hard-hitting victim impact statement in which she questioned how Vines was allowed to send her letters from inside HMP Bullingdon in Oxfordshire.
‘When I heard Edward Vines had breached his restraining order I felt scared and let down,’ she said.
‘Scared because it meant that even from within the prison system the perpetrator was able to reach me – let down because the system had been unable to stop him getting in touch even though the crime he is serving time for is harassment through unwanted ongoing contact.
‘It had affected my relationship with my husband, who is frustrated that we cannot get to the bottom of the problem even though we have been tackling it through the courts.
‘It has scared my children who thought the threat had gone away – albeit temporarily whilst he was behind bars.
‘It has affected my ability to work – I am constantly thinking of where I am being sent and whether he will be attempting to track me down.
‘It affects how I think when I leave the house and how will I get to work, what time I feel I should come home at night.
‘It makes me jumpy around strangers for no reason as it might be him.’
The mother-of-two added that Vines ‘remains a constant threat in my life and my family’s life’.
She told the court her ability to ‘work, hang out with my children, and lead a normal family life without a constant sense of suspicion and fear has been badly damaged’. Vines, from Oxford, appeared in court without any legal representation and was asked to explain his latest breaches to the judge.
‘As a defendant I never had full access to previous evidence given and I was not aware of the impact it was having on her life, this is news to me,’ he claimed from the witness box.
‘Through solicitors I have had and the police handling of things, I have never been able to solve this problem. I think the whole issue comes back to if she would talk to me just once, that hasn’t happened once since 1995 at university. There were one or two calls but that’s it.
‘I am very sorry about it, I had no idea how she was feeling. Two of us are unhappy in this situation. I don’t know what to do about it.’
Painting himself as a ‘victim’, Vines then added: ‘I think I have been through enough. All this distress has been caused by not being able to talk to her once since all those years ago at Cambridge.’
Before sentencing the stalker, Judge Peter Ross said: ‘I will be requiring a letter from the governor of Bullingdon Prison explaining how – despite the orders – letters were continuing to be sent from the prison to the victim.
‘The threat has not gone away despite you being behind bars.’ The judge said it was a ‘scandal’ Vines was able to continue sending letters.
He went on: ‘Given the continued reference to Jill Dando through many of the letters, the safety and security of Miss Maitlis and her family is extremely important.
‘These continued offences fall out of the sentencing guidelines and I have no hesitation with that.
‘I have taken into account your guilty plea but will not be reducing your sentence by the full third because of the circumstances.
‘Miss Maitlis wants absolutely nothing to do with you and that has been made clear repeatedly.’
‘References to Jill Dando’ ‘A constant threat in my life’