THE former fiancée of a psychiatrist wept yesterday as she described how she was driven to contemplate suicide by a campaign of death threats from a stalker.

Deborah Pemberton received up to ten threats a day as her wedding to Jan Falkowski approached, she told Southwark Crown Court.

She broke down while telling the jury: “It is a living nightmare. If you know your enemy you can do something about it. I had no idea who this nasty, vindictive, evil person was.”

Miss Pemberton, 35, planned to marry Dr Falkowski on September 6, 2003.

But in the preceding 11 months the couple and their families were bombarded with numerous text messages, e-mails and phone calls.

Miss Pemberton received threats that she would be “burnt down in her wedding dress” or shot by a gunman if the marriage went ahead. The wedding was cancelled, and the couple split in October 2003, the court was told.

Maria Marchese, 45, from Bow, East London, is charged with harassment, making threats to kill and perverting the course of justice by making a false rape allegation against Dr Falkowski.

Miss Pemberton, who now lives overseas, said that the harassment got so bad that “at one point I contemplated suicide.

“When you have lived in fear of your life for a year, it has nearly cost you your job, cost you your relationship, when they have threatened to kill your family, when they have taken everything away from you until there is nothing else to give and nowhere else to go, I thought if maybe I put a stop to it all then she couldn’t hurt me any more.

“I did nothing wrong, I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, dating the wrong person.” Earlier, Miss Pemberton told the court that she and Dr Falkowski became engaged on New Year’s Eve, 2001, 2½ weeks after meeting.

They began living together on the consultant’s boat in Limehouse, East London, and at her flat in Poole, Dorset, and led a normal life together for ten months before the stalking campaign began in October 2002.

At first, the accountant thought that the calls were “just a prank and the problem would eliminate itself”. But the harassment soon intensified, and she was targeted at work, at home and through family.

By July 2003 the campaign had reached a new level and Miss Pemberton was receiving “probably ten death threats a day by text. I was incredibly stressed but I was instructed by police not to discuss it with anybody else. I couldn’t talk to my family, my friends, I was living in undisclosed accommodation — my parents didn’t even know where I was living.”

Miss Pemberton said that as she travelled around the country to take part in powerboat races, she began receiving calls from the area codes where she was staying. “Every move I made I had to look over my shoulder, and I was becoming a wreck. I had no reason to suppose that these threats weren’t real, and I expected someone to come and get me, to attack me and maybe to shoot me.”

Threats were also made that the couple’s wedding guests would all be poisoned, and some relatives suggested that they were afraid to attend.

In June 2003 a decision was made to cancel the wedding.

Miss Marchese denies all charges.

The trial continues.

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