Woman's Mysterious Internet Stalker Turns Out to Be Her Awful Boyfriend

What if you were the victim of an online stalker? Someone who spent three years crafting a campaign against you, who somehow got his hands on nude photos of you and sent them to your family. How could that situation get any worse? What if it turned out your stalker was your boyfriend?

Yes, we are in Lifetime movie territory here, there's no denying it. Ruth Jeffery, an English university student, underwent a three-year ordeal of intimidation and harassment, much of sexual in nature, only to come out the other side to find that the person who'd made her life a living hell was her boyfriend, Shane Webber:

Jeffrey received such detailed messages that she believed her movements were being constantly watched by someone unknown to her and became frightened to go outside. [...] Impersonating Jeffrey, Webber contacted others online and pretended to be sexually attracted to them. He gave out her term-time university address, leading to one man turning up at her house. [...] She eventually realised that some of the detail in the messages could only be known to her boyfriend, but when he was confronted by her and her parents, he denied any knowledge of the harassment and pointed the finger at one of his friends, who was arrested and had his computer seized by police.

Webber was caught in June, when the IP address from which he sent nude photos of Jeffrey—from her email account, to her entire address book—was traced by the police. The pair had been dating for some ten years; Jeffrey says he "was a bit controlling and possessive," and may have been jealous of her, as he'd dropped out of school while she is still in college.

[The Guardian]