Cyber-stalker gets jail term

6:00am Friday 29th June 2007

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A cyber-stalker who carried out a "vicious, vitriolic and vindictive" harassment campaign against a July 7 bombing survivor was jailed yesterday.

Felicity Jane Lowde, 41, of Jackson Road, Cutteslowe, Oxford, used her blog and email to wage a hate-filled crusade of harassment for more than a year.

Her target, Rachel North, 36, admitted she had endured a "difficult year" after being bombarded with abusive web messages from Lowde.

Among more than 100 postings Ms North was accused of "making a living on the backs of the dead".

Ms North gave up her job to fight for an independent inquiry into the London bombings after surviving the Piccadilly Line blast which killed 26 people.

Lowde was convicted of harassment in her absence when she failed to appear in court in April and went on the run.

But yesterday she was jailed for six months and given a restraining order plus an Antisocial Behaviour Order (Asbo) for five years at London's Thames Magistrates' Court.

Judge Malcolm Read told her she had struck at Ms North's "terrible experience and trauma" as a victim of the London bombings.

Lowde, who has a grown-up son, told the court she intended to appeal her conviction.

She was charged under the Protection From Harassment Act 1997 for the abuse waged at Ms North between May, 2006 and January, 2007.

Ms North, who married in April, said the abuse had deepened her post-traumatic stress disorder, her sense of survivor guilt and left her fearing for her safety.

She said: "I would like to thank everyone who has supported me - my husband, my family, my friends, other web users, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service."

She also thanked the Oxford Mail for helping to trace Lowde - by passing on information to the police, from replies made by Lowde to our own website.

She said: "It has clearly been a difficult year for me and other victims. However, as Ms Lowde has stated she is going to appeal, this process is not over."

Among those other victims was Oxford graphic designer Daniel Hart, from Cowley, who has said he was left fearing for his safety after months of online abuse from Lowde.

Ms North said she wanted to put the whole incident to rest and had deleted the 400-day account of her ordeal from her blog.

She had set up her blog, under the name of Rachel from North London, to help other blast victims.

Lowde responded to the blog but it was not long before "her sneer of cold contempt was writ large in her emails" to Ms North, prosecutor Jonathon McGarry said.

He said: "She was asked to stop this vicious, vitriolic and vindictive campaign and chose not to do so."

Police eventually caught up with Lowde at a cafe in Brick Lane, Whitechapel, east London, following a tip-off.