A stalker who used social networking sites to terrorise a teenager student by bombarding her with threatening messages for nearly two years has been given a lifelong lifetimerestraining order.

Jason Smith, 23, was described as one of Britain’s worst cyber stalkers after becoming fixated with Alexandra Scarlett after meeting her at a nightclub. When she rejected his advances he sent her up to 30 menacing text and internet messages a day on websites including Facebook and MySpace. In some postings he threatened to slash the student’s face, in others he said he would rape her mother and aunt and shoot her father.

Miss Scarlett, now 20, was forced to shut down her online accounts before opening new ones. Even when she blocked him 40 times from having access to her Facebook page, he would simply set up a new account and sent her yet more terrifying messages.

Smith, who admitted harassment, was told that he had suffered from an “erotic mania” psychological disorder and was given a one-year suspended prison sentence. The restraining order bars him from contacting Miss Scarlett.

In a statement presented to Manchester Crown Court last week, Miss Scarlett said: “I was petrified he might find me. I felt as if I could not go out into Manchester as much any more. I felt harassed and controlled. I resent the fact that I have been forced to change my lifestyle.”

The hate campaign took place between November 2007 and March 2009 after Smith, from Newall Green, near Wythenshawe, met Miss Scarlett in Pure nightclub in Manchester.

Miss Scarlett gave him her mobile telephone number and the pair never saw each other again. But Smith became obsessed with her and started telling people that she was his girlfriend and sending her messages that began by saying he loved her but became offensive and threatening.

Miss Scarlett went to the police but Smith was undeterred and still sent her 30 messages a week. In June last year Miss Scarlett went back to the police but Smith then contacted her friends and family, using the sites.

He also managed to persuade one of his victim’s friends to give him her new mobile telephone number after posing as her boyfriend. He then used his computer skills to pose as Miss Scarlett and send her friends and family abusive messages.

When Smith was arrested in March 2009 he said he had fallen in love with Miss Scarlett and claimed that she had been calling him too.

Sentencing him, Judge Stephen Bedford told Smith that his chance meeting with Miss Scarlett and her decision to give him her mobilenumber was probably one of the her “biggest mistakes of her life”.

“It seems you think you are God’s gift to women and when they do not respond to you cannot accept it. I accept the view of the psychologist that you have a psychological disorder of the erotic mania subtype.”

A friend said: “Alexandra was in fear of her life. She didn’t know what this man was capable of. You hear of cyber stalkers waging hate campaigns on Facebook but there can be few worse or as menacing as thanthis one.”

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