A PATIENT who suffered a painful “botched” breast operation has been cleared of waging a three-year campaign of harassment against the woman who arranged the surgery.

June Jonigk wiped her eyes with a tissue as a judge said her actions – which forced Angela Chouaib to move from her Weston-on-the-Green home – had not been "unreasonable or irrational".

Speaking after being found not guilty following a four-day trial at Oxford Magistrates Court on Friday, Mrs Jonigk said: "I feel elated, relieved and ecstatic."

The 57-year-old added: "I have had 12 months of hell since being arrested."

The saga began in 2012 when Mrs Jonigk booked two trips to Poland with Mrs Chouaib’s firm Secret Surgery to have a tummy tuck and breast uplift.

Mrs Jonigk told the court both procedures were botched and she began sending messages through social media to Mrs Chouaib's friends, family and customers, as well as setting up a website that claimed she was a "fraudster".

She insisted she was only trying to stop other women being "botched" like she was.

Giving evidence, she said a hole opened up in her stomach after the first operation. She also claimed she had been given a breast reduction instead of the uplift.

She added: "I looked like I had been sliced with a Stanley knife."

Mrs Jonigk, of Allensmore, Herefordshire, originally asked for compensation, but refused to sign a confidentiality clause banning her speaking to anyone except her husband about the surgery.

She said: "I felt she had lied to mislead me to get me to book for surgery.

"My website was a way of doing that and to show people who she has lied to about me that it's not made up and I am not trying to blackmail her for money. Surgery abroad should not be taken lightly, it's dangerous."

Mrs Chouaib had earlier claimed the "hate campaign" had driven her from her family's home in Weston-on-the-Green.

She denied she was lying to people, and said she had been living in constant "alarm and distress" because of Mrs Jongik's actions, including posting a photograph of her [Chouaib's] home on her website.

Giving evidence last month she said: "This was a hate campaign and it was very personal. It's utterly soul-destroying.

"I almost felt stalked. I couldn't have any form of life because somehow, someway, despite blocking everyone I could find to be associated with Ms Jonigk, she knew everything I was doing, from sitting on a train to my whole life."

Almost bursting into tears, she added: "For the past three years I have been in constant alarm, distress, feeling victimised, constantly having to defend hearsay, inaccuracies."

Mrs Chouaib admitted she had posted images of 'before and after' surgery as if the operations were carried out by the hospitals used by Secret Surgery, when the court heard they had been taken from cosmetic surgeons' websites in the United States.

District Judge Tim Pattinson said he found Mrs Chouaib's answers "unconvincing" and that the posting of the images was a "serious deceit".

He said the hole that appeared in Mrs Jonigk’s stomach was a “serious matter” and he was “shocked” to see the misunderstanding that led to her receiving the wrong surgery on her breasts.

He added: “I find, without any hesitation, that what she received was a botched procedure.”

Mr Pattinson said Mrs Jonigk had not acted "unreasonably or irrationally" during the three years she was accused of harassing Mrs Chouaib.

He added: "Mrs Jonigk was concerned that the very serious matter of cosmetic surgery, involving as it can do, very serious surgery – some might say life-changing surgery – was being put across as completely risk free, somewhat trivial.

"Perhaps, although she didn't use those words, little more than going to a beautician or hairdresser.

"That's the impression Mrs Jonigk wanted to counter.

"What was she to do? How was she to go about protecting others from what she perceived to be an elaborate scam, an elaborate and dangerous scam?

"Not everyone would have behaved in the way she did, but that's not the point.

"The point is, has it been proved to me beyond all reasonable doubt so that I am sure, that Mrs Jonigk was unreasonable and irrational?

"The answer to that question is no."