Countdown creep stalks victim again
Attack survivor is ‘living in fear’
A FORMER Countdown winner who stalked and attacked a teenage girl has continued to harass her after being let out of prison.
Richard Brittain, 32, travelled 400 miles from his home in Bedford to find Paige Rolland at her workplace – an Asda store in Glenrothes, Fife.
She told a court in 2015 he hit her on the head with a wine bottle, leaving her with blood dripping down her arms and fearing she would die.
Brittain, who won the 2006 series of Channel 4’s Countdown, started stalking Miss Rolland, then 18, on social media after being angered by a poor review she posted online of his book, The World Rose.
He served only half of a 30-month sentence handed down after the 2014 assault, which left his victim needing dozens of stitches.
Following his release, Brittain has again contacted Miss Rolland by letter and via Facebook – despite being the subject of an indefinite non-harassment order. In one handwritten note sent to her home address, he said nothing was real ‘except their love’, adding that he would love her ‘for ever’.
Miss Rolland, who has moved to a secret address, suffers from severe anxiety, takes medication for mental health issues and has dropped out of university.
She told the Daily Record: ‘I live in fear every day he’s going to track me down again. I want people to know what this man is capable of... He obviously didn’t fear going back to prison or he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to track down my home address again. Prison didn’t change or rehabilitate him.’
Miss Rolland, now 23, contacted Police Scotland but said the procurator fiscal decided not to proceed with charges due to Brittain’s mental health. It is understood that Brittain is in a psychiatric hospital in England. According to Miss Rolland, he sent her a private Facebook message saying he had been ‘tempted’ to visit her but ‘thought it might look weird’.
His trial heard that a month before he attacked Miss Rolland, he stalked a university classmate.
Describing her attack in court, Miss Rolland said: ‘There was a lot of blood... Had he hit me any harder, I could have died.’