After a Dunedin woman\u2019s internet relationship broke down, she showed up at the man\u2019s house, called him a \u2018\u2018pedo\u2019\u2019 and pretended to be him on social media.<\/p>\n
Judith Anne Lewis, 44, appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday after earlier pleading guilty to posting a harmful digital communication and wilful damage.<\/p>\n
The court heard the defendant had been talking to a man online for about two years, but had only met him in person three times.<\/p>\n
The man tried to to stop engaging with Lewis, but she threatened if they did not meet face-to-face, she would make allegations about him to the police.<\/p>\n
On July 16, the man was at his Dunedin home when Lewis texted him saying she was coming to talk about their relationship ending.<\/p>\n
A short time later, the man heard a large bang on his sliding door.<\/p>\n
He looked outside and saw Lewis sitting on his doorstep with an empty bottle of wine.<\/p>\n
She refused to leave when he asked, so the man threatened to call police.<\/p>\n
Lewis became \u2018\u2018enraged\u2019\u2019 and smashed the wine bottle on the ground before punching the victim\u2019s wing mirror, a police summary said.<\/p>\n
She then used a piece of the broken wine bottle to etch the words \u2018\u2018why\u2019\u2019 and \u2018\u2018f… you\u2019\u2019 into the man\u2019s car.<\/p>\n
Later that month, she posted a photo of the man on Facebook with the caption \u2018\u2018pedo alert\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n
The post also included a link to an account which the defendant had created, posing as the man and posting contact.<\/p>\n
She had made multiple similar social media accounts pretending to be the man, the court heard.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the court, the victim said he continued to feel distressed, anxious and was bullied online.<\/p>\n
Judge David Robinson was concerned by Lewis\u2019s attitude to her offending.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You don\u2019t seem to think that this is serious,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018You don\u2019t take any particular responsibility for what you\u2019ve done.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
He said she had thumbed her nose at the court by posting and commenting about the victim online the night before her sentencing, in breach of her bail conditions.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Your conduct last night had me very seriously thinking about locking you up,\u2019\u2019 Judge Robinson said.<\/p>\n
But instead, he sentenced Lewis to 100 hours\u2019 community work, 12 months\u2019 supervision and ordered her to pay reparation of $1500.<\/p>\n
Judge Robinson also made a protection order in favour of the victim and granted him final name suppression.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018This conduct stops now,\u2019\u2019 the judge told Lewis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a Dunedin woman\u2019s internet relationship broke down, she showed up at the man\u2019s house, called him a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-270924","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}