Woman convicted of faking her own stalking; Sentenced to 1.5 years in prison

A Putten woman accused of faking her own stalking was convicted on Friday and sentenced to a year and a half in prison, including six which were conditionally suspended. The 34-year-old repeatedly contacted authorities and attempted to press charges against a man, claiming that he was harassing her, but those reports turned out to be false.

The man was wrongly imprisoned for a year for stalking. The Public Prosecution Service has apologized to the man. The District Court in Utrecht’s verdict and sentence was in line with the recommendation from the prosecutor.

S. filed false accusations in 2017, and between 2020 and 2021 in which she accused the man of threatening, harassing, insulting and discriminating against her. She also sent herself cards, text messages, Instagram messages and a knife, but making it seem like the man did this.

The messages were racist and threatening in nature. The man and the woman met each other in the clinic where S. was working as an intern. They allegedly had a conflict about medication there.

The court took into account the diagnosis that S. has a personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. This makes her less accountable for her actions, the verdict stated. S. was also banned from further contact with the victim for five years, and she must undergo psychiatric treatment.

In 2022, the TV program Zeeman Confronteert, in which journalist Thijs Zeeman seeks out stalkers, devoted an episode to the case. S. told her story during the broadcast. “That was a cry for help,” S. said in courtroom testimony at the end of April. “I should never have done that.”

The man had said through his lawyer that he has lost his trust in people. He has ongoing health problems and nightmares ever since. “Everyone believed the sympathetic nurse, not him, a psychiatric patient,” he said last month.