THE STALKER BEHIND THE SCREEN

When Sabrina Cowley, 43, started receiving accusatory messages on social media, she feared there was someone out to get her

As I opened yet another message on Facebook, I felt sick. ‘So you’re sleeping with your best friend’s husband

A friend’s husband now?’ it read. Shaking, I typed, ‘Please leave me alone. You’re ruining my life.’ It was 2021 and for the past six years, accusing, scathing messages had filled my inbox. A constant barrage of allegations that I’d had sex with friends’ partners or started sordid stuck in a neverending nightmare, living every day in fear of what would happen next.

It had begun back in June 2015, when I'd gone to visit my late mum's friend. While I was there, I was briefly introduced to a man called Matthew Hardy. 'Hi, I said to him. And that was it, I thought nothing more of him until a few days later. Oddly, he messaged me on Facebook, accusing me of having an affair with my mum's friend's 75-year-old husband.

I'd almost burst out laughing, it was so ridiculous. I told him it wasn't true, and then I'd never heard anything more from him. Yet, weeks later, I began to receive random messages from accounts I didn't know on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, each one with various accusations about affairs with people I knew. At first, I simply blocked the accounts and tried to forget about it. But when a friend called me soon after to ask if I'd slept with one of our friend's husband, I started to panic. She said that someone had messaged her to say we were having an affair. Of course it wasn't true, but I didn't understand it. Who was doing this? And why me?

ENDLESS ORDEAL