A STALKER terrorised a leading psychologist, bombarding him with threats and forcing him to cancel his wedding before falsely accusing him of rape, a court was told yesterday.

Maria Marchese ran a “prolonged and malicious campaign” against Jan Falkowski and threatened to kill the woman who was his fiancée, Deborah Pemberton, it was alleged. Over an 11-month period, Ms Marchese, an Argentinian, is said to have sent a barrage of threatening text messages, phone calls and e-mails that forced the couple to call off their wedding.

She then accused Dr Falkowski of raping her at St Clement’s Hospital, in East London, where he worked.

After the accusation was made in January 2004, Dr Falkowski was put on special leave by East London and City Mental Health Trust. He fought to clear his name until August 2005 when the case was dropped by prosecutors, who then began investigating Ms Marchese.

Opening the case against Ms Marchese at Southwark Crown Court, Mark Fenhalls, for the prosecution, described what is alleged to have happened to Dr Falkowski as perhaps the “worst nightmare of any doctor or psychiatrist”. He told the jury that Ms Marchese, 45, probably became aware of the consultant after he began to treat her former partner, George Attard, at St Clement’s.

Mr Fenhalls said that the first phase of harassment began after Dr Falkowski, 45, who is a record-holding power boat racer, became engaged to Miss Pemberton, a fellow enthusiast, in 2002. Both were subjected to a “torrid campaign of texts, e-mails and many phone calls, both expressly threatening and silent”, he said.

The messages and calls contained accurate and detailed information about their families, movements and addresses, and on one occasion a note was pushed under the door of Miss Pemberton’s flat in Poole.

One text message to Dr Falkowski read: “You’ll never know how much I felt for you over the last four years.”

Mr Fenhalls said that the psychiatrist later recalled that he had been treating Ms Marchese’s partner for about four years by this point.

On another occasion the couple returned to the boat on which they lived at Limehouse Marina, East London, to find that the gas cooker, which Dr Falkowski claims had never been used, had been left on.

One text message in December 2002, days before a dental appointment at which Miss Pemberton planned to have her teeth whitened, said: “Her mouth could burn.”

In others Dr Falkowski was urged not to marry “the false witch”, and claims were made that his fiancée had been cheating on him. Calls were also allegedly made and messages sent to family, friends and colleagues.

The campaign intensified just before the couple’s wedding, planned for September 6, 2003. Miss Pemberton was threatened that a hired gunman would kill her on the day. One message said she would be “burnt down in her wedding dress”. Another read: “Bang, bang, bang, that’s all you deserve. F***ing Deborah tart, your last days are counted up.”

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