AN ITV Presenter has told how she was terrorised by a stalker neighbour who would stare through her windows,

News anchor Isla Traquair was left terrified of professional gardener Jonathan Barrett who "chainsawed" bamboo fencing she put up to keep his prying eyes out.

Traquair, 42, was subject to the scary campaign of stalking between March and September 2021.

It began as soon as she moved into the house near the small Wiltshire town of Corsham, where scenes for hit BBC drama Poldark were filmed in the high street.

As a result she spent thousands fortifying her home and was forced to call in favours to sleep at friends' houses.

Following a trial earlier this year, Barrett, 54, was ordered to complete 300 hours of community service and pay £715 in costs after being convicted of stalking his next-door neighbour at Salisbury Magistrates' Court.

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He was also handed a restraining order to not contact Traquair or to enter or look into her property for one year.

But the ordeal has left its mark on the journalist, who says she now has PTSD and is scared to even go to the shops because of his "unnatural interest".

Traquair said: "Whenever I came out, he was there. He climbed over my back wall, entered my home through the conservatory and said, 'you haven't eaten' so he had been watching me. He left and came back with a sandwich and watched me eat it.

"It just built and built. It was really quite alarming.

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"After that, I put in bamboo screening which resulted in him hacking my hedge. It was then that I contacted the police. I'm a crime journalist. I didn't want to call the police and be a victim.

"Shortly after, he followed me in his van, and I tried to get away. I phoned the police again. Initially, with the female community officers, they were amazing. They heard me, they came up with a plan of action.

'REALLY SCARED'

"But that plan wasn't carried out the way it was supposed to be. I moved out thinking that the police would go around and he wouldn't react well because they would tell him I was putting up security cameras and a fence.

"But it didn't happen, and no one had spoken to him. Eventually, one officer went around but he said, 'we sat down with him and his partner, and they were nice and polite. It's a misunderstanding'.

"I asked if he told them about the fence going up, and he said, 'no, you can tell him yourself'. I said I'd been told not to contact him, but the officer said, 'I will not be your go-between'."

Traquair said that was when she had enough and took action, contacting the Chief Inspector.

She explained: "I was really scared at this point. I'd been shouted and sworn at by the stalker.

"It felt horrendous. I felt helpless, I felt angry. I didn't know what to do. It was madness, especially because of what my job is. I help victims of crime.

"They looked at it as a neighbourhood dispute. But he was taken off my case, and the inspector actually apologised and said, 'we should be your go-between, that is our job', and someone else was put on."

'I FEEL UNSAFE IN THE WORLD'

The presenter stayed with friends for a while but eventually "ran out of favours", so she went to live with her brother in the United States.

But then she heard the Crown Prosecution Service were dropping her case because it wasn't a problem anymore.

She wrote to the Wiltshire Chief Inspector and says later on her case was back on track, but they didn't grant her request to give a statement by video link.

Are you being stalked?

IF you are a victim of stalking, tell a friend, secure your social media, contact the police and call the National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0300.

So she had to pay "thousands" to fly back to the UK to attend court.

She said: "I'm not okay. It has devastated me. I've confronted murderers, and that didn't scare me anywhere near the level of terror I went through living in this idyllic countryside home.

"I have nightmares, I have PTSD. I've been going to therapy. Even going to the shops…I just feel unsafe in the world. It has shaken me to my core.

"What he stole from me… Stalking victims are serial victims. What a stalker takes from you, you cannot get back. And that's your sense of safety. I'm a potential victim for the rest of my life because stalkers don't just stop."

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Ms Traquair, originally from Aberdeen, recently worked on the Oprah Winfrey Network in the United States and released a true crime podcast 'The Storyteller: Violent Delights'.

Her appointment as 7pm news anchor at Channel 5 in 2008 sparked an age discrimination claim by Selina Scott, who reportedly won £250,000 when she was lined up for maternity cover of Natasha Kaplinsky before the younger, "glamorous" Ms Traquair got the job instead.

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