A former Aberdeen TV news presenter wept as she told a court her “obsessed” next-door neighbour “terrorised” her so badly she has had to move out of her own home.
Isla Traquair suffered nightmares and panic attacks due to the attention of Jonathan Barrett, who allegedly appeared at her conservatory window at 7am as she was about to undress and on another occasion “chainsawed” a bush in her garden.
The ex-STV and Channel 5 News presenter became terrified of “weird” Barrett who shocked her soon after she moved in by climbing over a wall into her garden and entering her house to offer her a sandwich, the court heard.
It was also alleged he would stand outside and stare directly into the bedroom window of her idyllic 1700s country cottage, on the edge of the Cotswolds.
The 42-year-old former Press and Journal journalist became so fearful she spent thousands of pounds fortifying her home with fences and security cameras before eventually fleeing. She has not returned to her home in almost a year.
Ms Traquair recently worked on the Oprah Winfrey Network in the United States and released a true crime podcast The Storyteller: Violent Delights.
Magistrates heard Barrett, 53, “terrorised” her between March and September 2021, beginning as soon as she moved into the house near the small Wiltshire town of Corsham.
Alicia Doble, prosecuting, told Salisbury Magistrates Court: “She is a journalist, a relatively well-known journalist, and it seems when she moved in Mr Barrett took an interest in her and in her life.
“Over the coming months he became obsessed with her. He would loiter outside her house, look through windows, stand on her wall and look into her conservatory.”
Ms Traquair told the court: “It has affected every part of my life. I can’t live in my home, I have had to stay with friends on their couches.
“There were periods of time I moved away and hoped the police would have another word with him.
“I have had nightmares, it’s affected my relationships… When I was in the house I barely went out at all because I was scared I would see him.
“I have panic attacks, I would wake in the middle of the night. Even if I saw a white van, because that’s what he drives, that would set me off.
Accused filmed peering through windows
“I was scared of him, I wanted to avoid him at all costs, his behaviour was frightening to me.
“I left my home and I honestly just tried to bury all this. It breaks my heart I can’t live in my own home.”
In January 2021, Ms Traquair – a former Westhill Academy pupil – was in the middle of renovating the house when Barrett jumped the wall separating their back gardens.
She said: “I was doing renovations so I didn’t lock the doors necessarily. He came in my property and said ‘You haven’t eaten today have you? I have some salmon, I’ll make you a sandwich’.”
The court heard Ms Traquair filmed Barrett peering through her window into her lounge where she was sitting for 40 minutes in April.
She said: “This was not the first time it happened. I eventually put a blind to block the entire window.
“It got to the point where I would just go to another part of the house.”
In June Ms Traquair put up bamboo screening to shield her conservatory from Barrett’s garden, but later that day she returned home to find a bush on her property had been “chainsawed” and was left “all jagged”.
Police spoke to Barrett later that month but Ms Traquair told the court this did not deter him and he continued looking into her house.
She had a fence and security cameras put up after this, on the advice of police, but Barrett kept “interrupting” and “intimidating” the workers putting them up by staring at them.
The journalist said she captured footage of him later that month standing at his van and staring into her bedroom window.
Ms Traquair told the court: “This happened an unmentionable number of times – pretty much every day.”
Barrett was eventually arrested and released by police, but three days later, security camera footage showed Barrett walking around the front of her home in his dressing gown and taking pictures, the court heard.
The “last straw” came in September. Ms Traquair said: “It was the evening, it was dark and I became aware of banging noises upstairs on the exterior wall so I don’t know if a ladder was involved.
“This was really quite traumatic… There had been stones thrown at my bedroom window at night before as well.
“This man had been terrorising me… I was scared. I phoned my friend, her husband came to pick me up and I just left.
“That was the last time I stayed in my house.”
Barrett, who lives in a £380,000 one-bed semi-detached home next to Ms Traquair’s in the village of Kingsdown, denies one charge of stalking.
Accused takes the stand
Barrett today took to the witness stand and claimed Ms Traquair has become ‘disturbed’ by making her true-crime podcast.
Barrett, a professional gardener, insisted she became ‘fixated’ with him during lockdown.
“I think she’s actually disturbed,” Barrett told the court.
“I know she was telling true crime murder stories and I think seeking out stories that send chills down people’s spines has become a fixation for her that she lives on, that fear.
“This is all happening during the lockdown period and I think she’s formed a fixation on me that I’m feeding that fear for her.
“I think fear sustains her. I’m not doing anything intentionally to feed her fear, she’s just caught in a self-elevating spiral of fear.”
He added: “I don’t know if this is an attempt to defame me, I don’t know if she’s trying to root me out of my property, I don’t know if her friends who are wealthy, if she’s backing them to buy the property so they can knock through or take over my garden which is better than hers in aspect.”
Barrett denied ever stalking or harassing Ms Traquair.
He said: “I fail to see how I’m harassing her and I don’t understand why she didn’t just tell me that’s how she was feeling.
“If I could have taken alternative action that would have made her feel better I would have done, I wasn’t trying to cause problems.”
The trial continues.
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