A week after the American peace protester Cindy Sheehan set up camp outside President Bush's ranch in Texas, her husband has filed for divorce.

Mrs Sheehan, 48, from Vacaville, California, has commanded considerable media attention since she pitched her tent on a patch of grass a mile from Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford.

Her voice is heard with respect because she is one of America's "Gold Star moms" after her 24-year-old son, Specialist Casey Sheehan, was killed in an ambush at Sadr City, Iraq, last year.

Within a week of setting up "Camp Casey" she had already given more than 100 media interviews, calling for US troops to be withdrawn from Iraq. But the pressure of the media attention appears to have proved too much for her husband, Patrick.

Last Friday he lodged a divorce petition at Solano County court, northeast of San Francisco, it emerged today. His lawyer did not immediately return calls asking for comment.

Mrs Sheehan says that the stress of the death had already led the couple, who were high school sweethearts, to separate. She admits that he does not agree with the "level of intensity" she has devoted to peace in the past year.

She has had to dissuade her younger son, Andy, from joining the Army. "I said there was no way this Government was going to get another of my children."

Mrs Sheehan has vowed to remain in Texas through Mr Bush’s five week holiday in Texas, unless he meets her. The White House repeated yesterday that the President sympathised with Mrs Sheehan but gave no indication that he would agree to a meeting. "Our message is to bring the troops home," she said yesterday.

It was ten days ago when Mrs Sheehan "spontaneously" decided to march up to the President's gate for some answers. "I want to know what is this noble cause he says my son died for and why he doesn't send his own daughters out there to fight for it," she said.

The President dispatched Stephen Hadley, his National Security Adviser, and Joe Hagin, a White House Deputy Chief of Staff, for a 45-minute chat with her. But Ms Sheehan refused to be fobbed off.

Camp Casey has since been joined by more than 100 anti-war activists, including other bereaved military families, camping in temporary shelters, adorned with home-made banners and tie-dyed peace art.

Local residents have protested that the campers are trespassing, and the local paper, the McGregor Mirror, has run an open letter to "the woman complaining about her son's death in Iraq" from Ann Lehman, a Crawford resident.

"You dishonour the President, yourself and God when you deny your son the freedom in death that he had in life to choose. He knew the risk when he joined the military, just as President Bush knows the risk for his life every day!" it read.

But Ms Sheehan is more than just a blot on the President's landscape: she is fast becoming this summer's media phenomenon. The focus on Ms Sheehan chimes with the sense that support is slipping away from Mr Bush as the death toll for US troops creeps inexorably towards 2,000. A recent opinion poll showed that only 38 per cent of American voters approve of Mr Bush's handling of Iraq.

President Bush has more political sense than to attack a bereaved parent, but right-wing websites have been doing their best to discredit Ms Sheehan, pointing out that she has already met the President, two months after her son's death.

Back then, according to a report in her local paper, she said, "I now know he's sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis" before suggesting that Mr Bush had given her back the "gift of happiness".

Ms Sheehan says that she was confused by grief at the time and now gives a very different account of her meeting with the President, saying that he acted as if he was hosting a party and clearly did not know her son's name.

She knows that her protest is distracting attention from Mr Bush's attempts to portray his five week Crawford vacation as a wholesome exercise in clearing brushwood and finding out what is on the minds of ordinary folk.

Last week Mr Bush said: "I sympathise with Mrs Sheehan. She feels strongly about her position and she has every right in the world to say what she believes. This is America."

He said that he understood the "anguish" of families who had lost loved ones but he insisted that those calling for all American troops to be pulled out of Iraq were wrong, because it "would send a terrible signal to the enemy".

Times Recommends

• Please help: maimed children of war want their lives back
• Cabal seizes diamond riches to buy power
• White House gatecrashers got to the president