A WOMAN hatched a plot to get her estranged husband’s attention by cutting her face and pretending she was the victim of two assaults.

Michelle Miller, of Brandon Close, Kidlington, was told she had wasted hundreds of hours of police time by reporting two fake crimes earlier this year.

The 32-year-old appeared in Oxford Crown Court on Thursday to be sentenced for harassment and perverting the course of justice.

Paul Harrison, prosecuting, said in November last year that Scott Miller started receiving anonymous emails from someone threatening to harm his wife.

He told Recorder Simon Blackford that these were also sent to his mother and 11-year-old daughter – but were from the defendant.

The barrister added that Miller, who was a ward clerk at the John Radcliffe Hospital’s heart centre, also hacked into her former partner’s Facebook account to get information and made dozens of silent phone calls.

Mr Harrison said she then told police she had been attacked and repeatedly punched by a man she didn’t know in an alleyway on February 19.

She made a further complaint that on March 6 a man with a scarf over his face attacked her in her house, he said.

The court heard Miller claimed she had been hit over the head by someone who said “this is for Scott” and inflicted a cut on her own face.

Mr Harrison said: “The police mounted a considerable investigation to find the identity of this man who was attacking loan females in the street.

“A large inquiry was set up. All four of the area’s CID teams were drawn into this inquiry and were involved in trying to track this person down.

“Many, many hours of manpower were wasted.”

He said the investigation came to a conclusion on March 23 when the defendant was arrested and admitted what she had done.

The barrister said the Millers married in June 2011, but their marriage only lasted a few weeks before they split up.

Benjamin Thiele-Long, defending, said: “She did this to get the attention of her former partner, to get him to know that he still cared for her and wanted her.”

He added that Miller suffered from depression, emotional instability and other health problems.

Recorder Blackford said he would take the unusual step of deferring Miller’s sentencing for five-and-a-half months, in which time she was not to contact her husband.