A jealous woman took revenge on her partner’s lover with a two-year hate campaign in which she created a string of fake Facebook identities to stalk her love rival.

Angela Warren used the fake profiles to sabotage and end her boyfriend Thomas Hoswell’s affair, but then enlisted his help in continuing her vendetta against the victim and her new partner.

The initial plan was to create the illusion that the other woman was cheating on Hoswell with a man named Simon Clarkson, but he did not exist and had been invented to trick her into embarrassing Facebook chats.

Warren and Hoswell went on to create a cast of other characters through more bogus Facebook accounts, including one called Louise Whitlam, who claimed to be Clarkson’s outraged partner.

The couple from Camborne used yet another fake persona to entrap the victim’s new partner into sending naked pictures of himself, which were promptly distributed to all his Facebook friends.

The court was told that even after the victim moved from her home in West Cornwall to live with her new partner, now husband, in Axminster, East Devon, she began receiving a stream of poison pen letters, although the sender of them has never been identified. The letters threatened to burn down their home or have acid thrown in their face.

Police were unable to prove who had sent them, although they coincided with the hate campaign. However, Warren's barrister Joss Ticehurst later said in the hearing that the prosecution now accepted that she was not responsible for the threatening letters that cause a large part of the distress and fear.

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Warren, aged 50, and Hoswell, aged 66, both of Brea, Camborne, admitted stalking. She was jailed for 19 months and him for nine months, both suspended for 18 months by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown Court.

Warren was ordered to do 25 days of rehabilitation activities and Hoswell 210 hours of unpaid work. They were each ordered to pay £2,000 compensation with a total of £1,100 costs.

The judge told them: “Your stalking was bizarre, mean and cruel and involved the distribution of private sexual images. The victims were left very distressed. It has pervaded their lives for a long time.

“Warren, you became fixated on and obsessed with this woman and embarked on a determined course of action which was obviously going to cause her great unhappiness and distress.

“You included her new partner as a target for your irrational enmity. You should have known that your despicable behaviour would cause terrible harm.

“Hoswell, you don’t appear to have cared about the effect and you seemed to have a perverse enjoyment in it."

Judge Evans made a ten year restraining order banning further online contact and prohibiting Warren and Hoswell from going to the victims’ new home in Redruth for ten years.

Daniel Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, said the stalking started in 2016 when Warren found out Hoswell was having an affair. It carried on until they were both arrested in 2020.

The victims both read out impact statements in which they said they had been left terrified, distressed and worried about leaving their home. The woman said she contemplated suicide.

Joss Ticehurst, for Warren, said her initial motive was not jealousy or revenge but an attempt to find out what Hoswell, who she had been with for 30 years, was doing. She accepted things got out of hand later.

Barry White, for Hoswell, said he played a secondary role and had not sent any of the messages from the fake Facebook accounts.