Ruth Jeffery’s mystery online stalker turned out to be boyfriend Shane Webber
- Shane Webber sent naked pictures of girlfriend to friends and family
- Ruth Jeffery became so ill she was prescribed anti-depressants
- Couple who met at school knew each other for 10 years
By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 9:19 PM on 20th September 2011
When Ruth Jeffery was harassed by an internet stalker, she turned to her loving boyfriend for support.
The university student contemplated suicide after being bombarded for more than three years with sexually explicit photos and videos.
She also suffered the indignity of having naked images of herself posted on adult websites and distributed to family and friends, including her parents.
Ultimate betrayal: Shane Webber’s online harassment made girlfriend Ruth Jeffery so ill she was prescribed anti-depressants
‘Stressed’: Ruth Jeffery was badly affected by her boyfriend’s online abuse campaign
When police eventually uncovered the identity of her tormentor, 22-year-old Miss Jeffery was sickened to learn it was her own boyfriend, Shane Webber.
The school dropout launched his twisted campaign because he was jealous of Miss Jeffery’s life at Loughborough University.
He is now facing jail after a court heard how he also went online posing as Miss Jeffery.
He contacted men saying she was sexually attracted to them and gave them her university address. One man turned up at her student house and had to be turned away.
Unemployed Webber, 22, continued his evil campaign despite knowing he was making his girlfriend ill.
She was prescribed anti-depressants, developed symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder and even stopped eating at times. The abuse affected her so badly that she had to retake exams for her computer science course.
Clue: Miss Jeffery eventually realised that some of the detail in the messages could only be known to Webber
Online campaign: A doctored image of Webber and his girlfriend. He even hacked into her email account and sent a naked picture of her to her entire contact list, including her own father
‘I’ve been feeling watched the whole time, because I felt a person was watching me and finding out what I was doing’
Webber pleaded guilty to causing harassment, alarm or distress at Southampton magistrates’ court, and will be sentenced next month.
Yesterday Miss Jeffery said she was still trying to have some of the naked pictures of her he posted on the internet taken down.
‘I want him to be put in prison because he has wrecked the past three and a half years of my life,’ she said.
‘We were really close. We did everything together. I would tell him everything.’
The couple met at school when they were both 11.
They were teenage sweethearts but split up before reuniting in 2007, when Miss Jeffery was in the sixth form.
But Webber had dropped out of school at 14 and Miss Jeffery believes he may have been trying to stop her from obtaining a degree because he had no qualifications himself.
‘Possessive’: Miss Jeffery believes jealousy could have been behind Webber’s motive for harassing her. She is studying for a degree while he dropped out of school at the age of 14
He began his campaign of abuse by setting up multiple fake email addresses to pose as former schoolfriends. He used these to send sexually explicit photos and videos to Miss Jeffery.
He then began impersonating her and distributing photos of her to family and friends, as well as online.
Miss Jeffery added: ‘It made me feel sick and so stressed because it was happening every single day.
‘There were times when I phoned up my mum and said, “I don’t want to be alive any more”.
‘I just didn’t want to do anything. The whole time I felt a person was watching me and finding out what I was doing.’
At one point Miss Jeffery became suspicious that her boyfriend was the culprit as only he had access to the photographs and certain information used in the emails.
But Webber, of Nottingham, convinced her that they had been stolen from his computer by a friend. Miss Jeffery reported the friend to police and his computer was seized.
When no trace of the emails or photos was found Webber came up with more lies about how they could have been taken.
He was eventually caught when police traced an email to his computer.
Miss Jeffery said: ‘Throughout the whole relationship, he was a bit controlling and possessive. If I didn’t go to see him the moment I had some free time, he would complain.
‘I want people to realise it has not been me sending the photos and messages, and I want the case to put other people off from doing the same thing.’
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