Religion teacher harassed female colleague with hundreds of emails asking her to elope

Teacher of religion accused of harassment and causing woman to fear for her safety after sending her hundreds of emails demanding that she leave her boyfriend and elope with him

A 37-year-old religion teacher has been remanded in custody after being charged with breaching bail conditions imposed after he allegedly harassed a female colleague, sending her hundreds of messages demanding that she leave her boyfriend and elope with him.

 The man was originally arraigned on 15 June, accused of harassment and causing the woman, with whom he is obsessed, to fear for her safety.

The prosecution told magistrate Astrid May Grima that he had sent the woman hundreds of emails and also ended up sending emails to two of her colleagues as well as her boyfriend.

Inspector Leeroy Balzan Engerer, prosecuting, told the court that students at the school had also received emails about the victim from the accused.

Defence lawyer Benjamin Valenzia entered a plea of insanity, telling the magistrate that the man was not in a state to respond to criminal proceedings. The court, on its part, appointed a psychiatrist to evaluate the man.

The accused, who is from Xewkija, Gozo had been arraigned a month ago accused of harassing the victim and other teachers whom he used as a bridge between him and the object of his obsession.

The advances had begun in January 2019, when the male teacher had started to flirt with his colleague, ending up telling her that he was ready to dump his girlfriend of 10 years to start dating her, insisting that she should do the same.

Inspector Balzan Engerer explained that he himself had received nearly 500 emails from the accused, many of which made no sense. Asked by the defence, the inspector said that he was aware of the fact that the man was under the care of a psychiatrist.

The alleged victim also testified, recalling how the man had asked to meet her in a hall at the school itself, where he had oddly only spoken to her about the curtains there. Shortly afterwards, he had asked her out, saying that he was prepared to break up with his longtime girlfriend to do so.

The woman had replied that she was happy in her relationship and from that moment on, started to avoid the man, not even speaking to him.

She said he started to bombard her with messages on Facebook messenger, where she had unsuccessfully asked him to desist from doing so.

On one occasion, he had invented a story about her boyfriend beating her. Many of the messages made no sense, but others scared her, she said.

He had threatened her with her life at one point, she said and had also told her that she would need a psychiatrist “because of her boyfriend’s actions”. He later went on to send her messages on her government email address as well as contacting her boyfriend on Facebook messenger. The harassment had reached a point where she was too scared to check her emails, she said.

Eventually, the couple had gone to the police to file a report. For the next year, things appeared to have calmed down, with him saying that he was seeing a psychiatrist.

The defence did not request bail again and the man was remanded in custody.