Sticker stalker’s racism accusations land him hefty fine

A Brighton man who put up stickers at his former student housemate’s workplace accusing her of racism has been convicted of stalking.

Joshua Husbands, 25, formally complained about the woman when they were at university together, but the complaint was not upheld.

Two years later, when he discovered she was working at the i360, he began putting up stickers there saying she was a racist – and then replacing them when they were taken down four times.

Over a five week period in spring last year, he also put them up around Brighton on her way to work, and scrawled graffiti making the same accusation in the men’s toilets of Dead Wax Social in Bond Street.

Prosecuting at Brighton Magistrates Court today, Amy Fraser said: “CCTV showed the defendant placing these stickers in the i360 and so he was arrested and found guilty after a trial.”

In a statement read out in court, the victim, who Brighton and Hove News is not naming, said she had moved away from Brighton to avoid the defendant and his accusations.

She said: “Every street I walk down I have to consider my safety. His presence is a constant concern. His family is also concerning.

“The strain of carrying on as normal has been mentally exhausting. The harassment has been relentless since I was 21.”

Defending, George Smart said Husbands, of Preston Road, had defended himself at trial by saying he had a free speech right to make the accusation, and that the charge – of stalking involving serious harm – was too harsh.

“Mr Husbands made a report of racial abuse. He didn’t report it to police, which was a mistake, but did report it to the university. It was his first experience of racial abuse.

“The university made no finding – he felt the matter was considered unresolved and a sense of injustice and such was the impact of that incident, when that sense of injustice was brought up again for him he decided to take matters into his own hands.

“He felt she had got away with it.”

He said he had already been punished by having the case hang over him for two years, some of which he spent under a curfew, and for most of which he was banned from making stickers, a hobby of his.

Mr Smart asked the bench to consider a conditional discharge.

But chair of the bench Harry Callaghan said the offence was too serious for that. He told Husbands: “You placed stickers where the victim could see them. You made sure she could see them and when they were tken down you replaced them.

“We are going to deal with this by way of a financial penalty.”

He fined Husbands £484 and ordered him to pay a surcharge of £194 and court costs of £650, bringing the total court bill to £1,328.

He also passed a restraining order forbidding Husbands from contacting the victim either directly or indirectly for two years.