Bev won in court against the man who harassed her

It should be just another day on the school run, but Bev Nickson is being followed by a man who is shouting at her.

Hand in hand with her four-year-old in the picture-postcard village of Wrea Green near Lytham St Annes in Lancashire, Bev tries to increase her pace – but her stalker easily keeps up, yelling: ’Morning, Bev. What’s wrong with you this morning, Bev? Not very chatty this morning? Cat got your tongue this morning, Bev?’

’This happened most mornings for six weeks,’ she says now. ’It was deliberately aggressive. My daughter would say, “Mummy, why is he shouting at you?“

’His body language was intimidating. He puffed out his chest, leaned forward and walked really closely behind me.’

You’d expect such behaviour to be of interest to the police, perhaps, but when Bev reported it, they told her it wasn’t a criminal matter.

But that’s not the most disturbing aspect of Bev’s story. What’s most shocking is that the man in question was Bev’s neighbour – a father, teacher and eventually governor in a nearby school.

Outwardly a thoroughly respectable figure, within the confines of this tight-knit village community he made Bev’s life such a misery that she walked on eggshells in her own neighbourhood and began to suffer panic attacks so severe she once collapsed on her kitchen floor.

In a campaign of harassment that lasted more than three years, Bev’s neighbour would follow her, film her on his phone, obstruct her on the pavement. He spread gossip about her, posted about her online and even threatened the life of her dog.

’It felt like it was 24/7,’ she says. ’I think he wanted to break me.’

In a campaign of harassment that lasted more than three years, Bev was pursued by her neighbour who would follow her, film her on his phone, obstruct her on the pavement

What’s more, her story exposes a ’safeguarding scandal’ in the UK’s judicial and education system, she claims. For though she reported more than 30 incidents of harassing and stalking behaviour to the police, in the end she – and her family – were forced to take out a civil case against her tormentor to win an order restricting his behaviour.

And, since civil orders do not appear on the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check employees need to work with children, the man responsible would ’continue to hold positions of trust’ not only in the community but in schools, too.

It was in 2020 that Bev, her husband, their then three-year-old daughter and their labrador-mix rescue dog moved into a five-bedroom detached house on a new-build estate on the edge of the village.

Widely regarded as one of Lancashire’s prettiest villages, Wrea Green is clustered around a huge green and duck pond known as ’The Dub’ and has a traditional pub at its heart. Yet for Bev, a career coach, it was very far from the peaceful idyll it appeared.

Then 44 and proactive and sociable, she quickly forged bonds with her neighbours, but there were early signs that one of them was not nearly as friendly as the others.

Indeed, this neighbour – let’s call him John – seemed very quick to anger over the smallest thing. His furious shouting left Bev’s daughter’s dance teacher visibly shaken, for example, when she visited the house and accidentally drove over a portion of another neighbour’s lawn.

After this, Bev became wary about asking people to the house and would send them a map showing where to drive and park in order to remain as far as possible from her harasser’s house.

’He acted like the sheriff of the estate,’ says Bev. ’He inserted himself into so many neighbours’ activities and chores, especially concerning gardening and bins.’

John was married with a daughter a couple of years older than Bev’s and, in March 2021, his wife invited Bev’s daughter to play at their house and use their hot tub. Bev allowed her to go round, dressing her in her swimsuit and lifejacket, as she would for a visit to the swimming pool.

Later that evening, very oddly, John sent Bev an image of her daughter in the tub taken on a security camera.

’The camera was above the hot tub,’ Bev says. ’We weren’t connected on Facebook, but he found my profile and sent it to me on Facebook Messenger.

’He was in the tub, too, wearing only swimming shorts. I found it strange that a teacher would put himself in that situation.

’I’d thought he and his wife – who I was on polite terms with, although she was quiet – would be supervising the children from their sun loungers, which is what she was doing.’

Bev lives in the picture-postcard village of Wrea Green near Lytham St Annes in Lancashire

But also, she adds: ’Who does that? Wouldn’t a photo be more appropriate than an image from a security camera? Why was he rewinding his CCTV to get that image?’

The following month, John offered free private tutoring to Bev’s daughter.

’He taught in a primary school but did private tutoring on the side,’ says Bev. She now thinks he wanted to grow his business through her. ’In 2017 I set up a Facebook group for mothers in Lytham called Lytham Mummies, which has 3,600 members. I wonder if he wanted me to post a favourable review about him to the group?’ In any case, she declined the offer.

Not long after, another incident on the estate made her glad of her decision. This time, John flew into a rage when he saw a resident about to cut a branch from a tree belonging to another neighbour because it had been scratching the roof of her car on her driveway.

Bev happened to witness it all. Wearing only his swimming shorts, the teacher, who is just under 6ft and ’stocky’, stood directly in front of the neighbour – a mother of two children in her late 40s – and with raised hands, screamed in her face that he was sick of her, ’which caused her to hyperventilate’.

He then ’began aggressively hacking at the entire tree, shouting, “Is this what you want, all you had to do was come to ask my permission, but you couldn’t do that could you?“.’

It was characteristically controlling and irrational, she says: his permission wasn’t needed since the tree wasn’t his.

John did apparently realise that he had overstepped the mark and sent a message to Bev apologising and making a number of allegations about the poor woman he’d shouted at.

’I replied to him that I knew exactly what I saw and that he had been aggressive. I asked him to stay away from me and my family but said, “Let’s be civil because we live on the same estate“.

’If you’re a reasonable person who respects boundaries, when you hear that, you stop. But I now know that stalkers don’t. A stalker sees that as rejection, that they don’t have control over you, and they go in the opposite direction.

’He kept a low profile that summer but in September 2021, when my daughter started at the village school, he started his campaign of following me on the school run.’

His behaviour worried her so much that after a while she began driving the very short distance to school whenever her husband wasn’t using their car.

Wrea Green is clustered around a huge green and duck pond known as ’The Dub’

On another occasion, she says: ’I was in the car on a narrow road next to my house, and had to mount the kerb and grass verge to avoid a collision with him in his vehicle.’

John also started to film her on his phone Vin the street and in the village at various times of day’.

’I would see he was pointing his phone at me, my car, when I was out walking my dog.

’On one occasion he walked down the middle of the road so I couldn’t drive along it, shouting “f*** off“ at me. He was so unpredictable I thought he was going to jump on my car bonnet and then claim I’d hit him.’

At home later that day, Bev suffered a panic attack and collapsed on the kitchen floor. Her sleep was suffering and she was constantly on edge. Feeling increasingly anxious, she had begun cataloguing his harassment and reporting it to the police. ’Early on, a female officer came out to see me but said, “He hasn’t exactly got a knife to your throat, has he?“ They just listed the logs as “no further action“.’

But the harassment intensified. John knew Bev was on the committee of the village traffic safety group, and wrote to its chair trying to get her thrown off because she was ’malicious’. He questioned her ’credibility and integrity’ and said she had falsely reported him to the police.

Instead, John said he was going to report Bev to the local council for having her dog off a lead, and then sent a meme to a village Facebook group of 3,500 members, with the caption: ’Dear neighbour… shut your f***ing dog up or I’m going to be wearing his head as a hat.’

Bev is convinced this was aimed at her. ’It made me feel physically sick,’ she says. ’I tried to look after myself the best I could. I kept exercising, for example, but it’s very difficult when you can’t sleep.

’I never relaxed. I work from home and began to feel nervous about being alone all day once my husband had gone to work. I had to turn down jobs because I couldn’t concentrate.’

In the civil court case she would eventually pursue against John, Bev filed veterinary records showing that her dog had a spate of sudden illnesses during this period. In the space of four months, the dog suffered bouts of vomiting, not eating, unquenchable thirst, lethargy and diarrhoea, sometimes with blood. ’I was extremely worried,’ Bev says.

The case was resolved in Bev’s favour and, soon after, John moved away from the village

Wiping away tears, she adds: ’I was thinking, I can’t protect my family. I didn’t want my husband to go round to see him in case it escalated or turned nasty.

’I started to think we should move even though we hadn’t been there long. Or perhaps I should go and live somewhere else with my daughter and the dog, thinking he’d leave my husband alone if he was the only one there.

’But I love my family so much, I started thinking, if the police won’t do anything, there has to be another legal way to stop it.’

Bev employed a firm of solicitors in Preston who backed up her case with details of how John had targeted many others around the estate and posted nasty and aggressive remarks’ on the village’s Facebook traffic group.

Based on the 34 incidents she had by then reported to the police, her legal team identified 19 different stalking and harassment behaviours, including ’intimidating behaviour, boundary-crossing, persistent unwanted communication, reputation damage and online harassment’.

After compiling all her evidence, Bev took her case to Preston County Court, where a judge granted a civil order to restrict John’s behaviour, stopping him from contacting her, posting on social media about her, filming or photographing her.

’Many civil orders are time-limited – say, three or five years – but, after reading all the witness statements, the judge commented that there was a “clear pattern of incidents“ and made the order permanent,’ she says.

John’s legal team argued he was well-liked and that Bev was overreacting and making up stories, but the case was resolved in her favour and, soon after, John moved away from the village.

The Nicksons had to pay a legal bill of more than £30,000, she says, which they took from savings earmarked for house renovation.

Fortunately for Bev, her tormentor was ordered to pay 90 per cent of her legal costs and £5,000 in damages. ’We’ve estimated that his behaviour over three years has likely cost him in the region of £55,000, when you add in his own legal costs,’ Bev says.

If she had lost, though, she would have had to foot a similar bill. ’But no money can compensate for the trauma and fear I experienced over three years,’ she adds.

Yet Bev’s relief that he was out of her life did not last long. Shortly afterwards, she heard he was continuing to teach children and had also become a school governor at a primary school in another village in Lancashire.

’I couldn’t believe it. This was a man who had made my life a nightmare for three years, and cast fear across a community, yet here he was with a good reputation and working with children.’

She found that DBS checks do not automatically include civil orders, meaning a pattern of disturbing behaviour won’t show up if it’s only been aired in a civil court. Bev decided to contact the school in question and received a reply from the chair of governors stating that it had ’taken advice and guidance from multiple external agencies with relevant expertise as well as the police and the school legal team’ about the appointment.

Since then, however – for reasons unclear to her – John has ceased to be a governor there.

Now, Bev is campaigning for serious civil harassment outcomes to be disclosed on the enhanced DBS checks required before becoming a school governor or working with children. In October last year, Bev’s MP, Conservative Andrew Snowden, raised the matter in Parliament, and Bev is now having discussions with the Home Office.

’I believe this is one of the most serious safeguarding scandals in England and Wales, one that has been quietly ignored, yet leaves children and vulnerable adults at risk every single day,’ she says.

’I’ve been researching this issue for months, and there are many abusers and stalkers who have civil court restrictions but are working in responsible, professional positions.’

She is left to wonder about the fallout from it all on her daughter and family. Although her marriage stayed strong throughout, the legal bill was an added stress.

’The finance was the only pressure in our marriage, as we had plans to renovate the house,’ she says. ’But I do feel sad that for a long period I wasn’t really present with my family. I was so on edge, so distracted.

’Hopefully, my campaign will mean that people who behave like this can’t then automatically walk into jobs needing a DBS check. That would make it all worth it.’

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