Stalker turned up at KC's chambers, court hears

A 59-year-old man who targeted a silk by sending messages, emails, calling her and sending flowers to her chambers has admitted stalking.

Birmingham resident Robert McKenna, 59, had no professional or personal contact with Anneliese Day KC before he began his four-and-a-half year stalking campaign which included unwanted texts, emails, messages, and phone calls. The emails sent by McKenna were ‘sexualised in nature’.

City of London Magistrates Court yesterday heard McKenna called Day’s clerk asking for her location and other private information and on 13 February this year, attended her chambers, though she was not there, and left flowers and a card saying ‘Happy Valentine's to sexy bum’.

McKenna also sent Day images of herself which she had posted on her personal social media account. It is not clear, the prosecution said, how he came to access the images, some of which he also posted to his own Instagram account. 

The court heard Day received phone calls from numbers, two of which McKenna admitted were his, as well as calls with no caller ID. The prosecution said: ‘She did answer one [no caller ID] phone call and it was the defendant who then wished her a happy Christmas, and she told him to stop contacting her.’

In January this year, the court heard, Day answered a call and ‘categorically told him to stop contacting her and to remove photos he had published of her to his Instagram account’. McKenna did delete the photos.

Day’s victim impact statements were read out in court in which she described how she ‘felt sick’ when McKenna sent the photo ‘of the bare buttocks’ and his repeated contact left her feeling ‘concerned’. She felt ‘unsafe’ when he contacted her and she was alone adding: ‘After he showed up at my place of work, my level of concern was on another scale’.

‘I especially felt scared walking home alone at night and avoided doing so’, Day said. She also described her trouble sleeping and ‘continues having nightmares’ about McKenna contacting her or turning up at her workplace or home. She described the ‘significant impact’ on her career and how she ‘started worrying about things I never had to worry about like getting into a taxi or getting public transport’ as well as the ‘threat to others in my workplace especially my clerk and I worried about the safety of my family’.

‘I am still coming to terms with how awful it is,’ Day’s victim impact statement said.

Catherine Day, for McKenna, said her client did not accept the third phone number was his or that he made the no-ID calls. She said: ‘It is a stretch for the court to assume all of these no caller IDs, 11 of them, [are from] the defendant.’

McKenna admitted a single charge of stalking causing serious alarm or distress. His case was deemed to be 'significantly serious' to warrant he be moved to Crown court for sentencing. He was released on conditional bail that he not contact Day directly or indirectly and not to come within the confines of the M25 save to attend court.