Overview
- The defendant admitted in Salisbury Magistrates’ Court this week that she breached a restraining order by running a lawnmower outside while the neighbours hosted a garden dinner, conduct prosecutors said was intended to annoy the victims.
- Prosecutors relied in part on covert video recorded by the couple’s friends that captured the defendant admitting she knew the neighbour was outside and ‘wanted to wind her up,’ footage later given to police and used in court.
- The restraining order followed a February 2021 conviction for property damage and barred the defendant from contacting, pestering, or annoying the Rotherhams, and she previously breached the order in 2023 and received a six-week sentence suspended for 12 months.
- The couple say the harassment lasted about 14–15 years and included spying through a hole in a hedge, throwing dead moles into their garden, banging a wheelie bin near a bedroom window, and repeated verbal abuse.
- The victims report heavy personal and financial costs, including spending thousands on new fence panels and avoiding their garden, while the defendant—who moved to Dorset in January—faces sentencing next month with the prospect of imprisonment.