PEEPING POET IS BANNED
AN elderly stalker posted 60 letters to a female member of a church poetry group and peeped at her from behind the pillars.
Edmund O’brien, 76, sent the woman “literature, photographs, magazines, books and other items” for 18 months.
After things started arriving in February 2020, she left a note on her door asking O’brien to stop but he ignored it and posted her a photocopy of the note.
Police warned him not to contact the woman several times but he was eventually charged with harassment. O’brien was convicted in January – and was also convicted of breaching his bail conditions by approaching her. He followed the woman as she walked her dog and peeped at her from behind the pillars of St John the Baptist Church in Uxbridge, West London, while she attended a poetry group.
District Judge Deborah Wright said: “The vicar spoke to him and advised him not to attend the church.”
Uxbridge magistrates court heard that last month, O’brien even asked his probation officer if he could have “friendly contact” with the woman as he had heard she had moved home.
The judge gave the pensioner from Ickenham, West London, a stalking protection order that bans him from the church when the poetry group takes place.
The judge also said O’brien did not recognise that his behaviour amounted to stalking.