The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Jilted stable hand’s acid threat to former lover
Court: Former lover made her messages public
A JILTED stable hand who told his ex-partner she would have acid thrown in her face has been warned he is facing jail.
Craig Burgoyne rang Rebecca Laidlaw in a rage after she left him and began dating an ambulance service worker.
He called her mobile and told her he was coming to visit – and “somebody" would throw acid in her face for being so vain.
The 26-year-old bombarded her with phone calls, told her new partner he was “a dead man-walking", and hacked into her social media account.
He made private messages
between her and her new boyfriend public, so they could be read by all her 481 Facebook friends, including her parents. Then he changed her password so that she could not delete the “graphic and intimate" exchanges between his victim and her new boyfriend, and sent a crowing text to a friend which boasted: “I nailed her on Facebook.”
A court heard yesterday that the ordeal Miss Laidlaw suffered was known as being “Fraped".
The 22-year-old said Burgoyne's behaviour had left her fearful of leaving the “security" of Shetland, where she returned to so she could live with her parents after leaving him.
She told Stirling Sheriff Court she received the phone call about the acid at 6.18am on October 14 last year, two months after the end of her two-and-a-halfyear relationship with Burgoyne. She said had been woken earlier by her new boyfriend, Jason Henry, who arrived at her parents’ home to warn her messages they exchanged privately had been posted on her public Facebook pages.
She said: “A very private conversation between me and Jason had been placed on Facebook. I was embarrassed, humiliated, and upset. Craig said he was coming up to Shetland and somebody would throw acid inmy face for being so vain. He was shouting that and sounded loud and angry.”
Mr Henry, who overheard the phone call, said: “There was a lot of abuse. The thing that stuck in my mind was he said he was in the car, he was going to come up to Shetland, and he had some acid he was going to throw in her face for being such a vain bitch. There was no reasoning in his voice, it was pure threats and abuse.”
After a trial held over two days, in September and yesterday, Burgoyne, of Au chen bowie Farm, Stirling, a stable hand at the Blue Ridge Equestrian Centre near Falkirk, was found guilty of stalking Miss Laidlaw, causing her fear and alarm.
He had denied the charge and claimed that someone must have got hold of his mobile and used it to hack into Miss Laidlaw’s Facebook.
He accepted he had made the early-morning phone call, and told fiscal depute Gail Russell, prosecuting: “I might have said she was vain, but I said nothing about acid.”
Miss Russell said the “Fraping" was a “hugely embarrassing thing done out of spite".
Sheriff Wyllie Robertson said he accepted the evidence of all the Crown witnesses and discounted Burgoyne's claims that he had not acted as the prosecution had said.
He deferred sentence until December 9 for background reports and told Burgoyne: “Having regard to the nature of this charge, you should realise that no sentence, including custody, is ruled out.”
A spokeswoman at the Blue Ridge Equestrian Centre said: “He's a stable hand here. We didn't know about the court case.”
“He had some acid he was going to throw in her face”