A vindictive stalker sent letters to a north-east teacher’s home and school aimed at outing him as gay.
Matthew Smith appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court and admitted bombarding the teacher with letters, messages and pictures where he accused him of being homosexual and hiding the fact.
Smith, a retail worker, also sent letters to the man’s parents and colleagues in an attempt to expose his sexuality.
The 24-year-old was described as having an “unhealthy obsession” with the Aberdeenshire teacher over the four-month-long ordeal.
Smith pleaded guilty to one charge of carrying out a course of conduct that caused fear or alarm to the man by sending repeated texts, letters and photographs to his home, family and work.
Stalker sent letters to man’s parents and school
Fiscal depute Sean Ambrose told the court that the teacher had started “a brief online relationship” with Smith but said the two men never met in person.
However, shortly after the teacher informed Smith he didn’t want any further contact he started to receive a barrage of text messages.
Mr Ambrose said: “Then on July 23 2020 the complainer received a six-page document that was signed off by ‘Matthew’.
“The complainer refused to read the document as he wanted no further contact with the accused.
“At the beginning of August 2020, an envelop arrived address to the complainer’s parents at his home address.
“The content of the letter was regarding the complainer’s sexuality and made reference to him being gay and for him to stop lying about it.”
The letter claimed Smith and the teacher had met and was signed off by the name ‘Kevin’.
Smith then sent another envelope to the Aberdeenshire school where his victim worked, which included a typed letter where Smith threatened to harm himself. The letter was signed with the name ‘Matthew’.
“This caused the complainer significant fear and alarm,” Mr Ambrose told the court.
A second letter was sent to the victim’s parents that included screenshots from Facebook and Snapchat and the contents of the letter made reference to the teacher “being gay” and that he was “yet to tell his family”.
The screenshots included a fictitious conversation on social media in which the teacher is chatting to various men.
A few days later two other teachers at the school received letters from Smith. They immediately called the police, who seized the letters.
In September 2020 Smith was arrested and cautioned but denied any involvement.
However, police forensics teams linked his fingerprints to envelopes sent to the teacher.
‘This kind of offending is serious’
Defence agent Neil McRobert told the court that Smith “accepted responsibility” for the correspondence to the man.
He said: “He is remorseful for his conduct and actually got in touch with me to move this forward as he wanted this to be resolved.”
Sheriff Philip Mann told Smith that his offences were “serious and are taken seriously by the court”.
“You’ve got to be able to resist subjecting other people to harassment and stalking, which is what this is,” he added.
As an alternative to a prison sentence, Sheriff Mann sentenced Smith, of Gordon Place, Ellon, to a community payback order with 12 months of supervision.
He also ordered Smith to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work.
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