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An Oxton man who stalked and harassed a woman for nearly three years with unwanted sexualised phone calls and text messages has been jailed for three years.
As reported by the Wirral Globe, Craig Long, 39, of Merlin Road in Oxton, appeared at Chester Crown Court on Friday 2 October where he was sentenced and handed an indefinite restraining order against his victim.
Long had plead guilty to stalking involving serious harm and distress ahead of going to trial.
The court heard that Craig stalked a 38-year-old woman from February 2022 to September 2024. The victim was bombarded with sexual text messages and phone calls by a man she at the time didn't know the identity of.
The man also sexual harassed her, asking her to meet him for sex. The court was told the man was touching himself inappropriately while on the phone to her.
The man also told her he knew her workplace, which meant she had to leave her job.
The caller gave no information about himself to the victim, but clues pointed to Long being the caller, concluded by phone calls and text messages the victim had stored.
In one text message, the man asked the victim to meet him in a car park for sexual intercourse, enquiries later uncovered this car park was very close to Long's address.
When his identity was challenged, the man suggested he and the victim had a connection, providing the initials of his current partner. These initials matched a person the victim knew was in a relationship with Long.
In April 2024, Long was arrested but didn't answer questions related to the stalking. He was released on bail with strict conditions not to contact the victim.
After his arrest, five months went by with the victim receiving no texts and calls from her stalker. The calls resumed in September 2024 from an unknown number, where the victim could hear a man breathing down the phone, but he did not say anything to her.
Long was charged with the offences in July 2025.
Investigations into the numbers that contacted the victim wielded no data, leading officers to believe long purchased SIM cards just to contact the victim.
In a statement read at court, the victim said her mental health had been severely impacted by a man who, prior to the phone calls beginning, she had never had any contact with. She said she was now a different person as a result.
She also said she'd taken steps to secure her home, fearing her stalker would come to her home. She also spoke of how her relationships had been affected by the stalking.
Police Constable Yzanne Baty, who led the investigation, said: "Craig Long targeted an innocent woman and subjected her to a barrage of disgusting messages and phone calls over a period of nearly three years, despite him being in a relationship himself and having no personal connection to the victim he preyed upon."
PC Baty added: "Despite being clearly told no on several occasions, he refused to take rejection as the answer and instead doubled down, going to great lengths to remain in contact with the victim by obtaining a number of SIM cards at his own personal expense."
PC Baty also said Long saw the stalking "as a game" and as part of his "warped fantasies".
