A WOMAN convicted of harassing a university professor faces the possibility of a jail sentence.

A Liverpool Crown Court jury took almost three hours on Monday to find 50-year-old Gillian Hartshorne guilty of two charges of causing fear of violence to Professor David Canter and a similar charge against one of his students, Dr Samantha Lundrigan.

Hartshorne, of Hope Farm Road, Great Sutton, South Wirral, tutted as the first guilty verdict was returned.

Judge Sean Duncan told the mother-of two: "The jury have found you guilty of a really dreadful series of phone calls going well beyond any form of reasonable enquiry, whatever the circumstances.

"The jury have found that folk are entitled not to receive that sort of phone call. But no one has been hurt in the physical sense, although no-one listening to Dr Lundrigan's evidence as to how she felt can have been left unmoved."

The judge said he wanted a psychiatric report on Hartshorne and very much hoped that she could bring herself to co-operate with that. Hartshorne may be a happier person as a result of medical help, he said.

But he told her: "The fact you are being bailed is no indication as to sentence. All options are open."

Hartshorne was further remanded on bail until March 15 when her case will be mentioned to see how the reports are progressing.

During a five-day trial the court heard that Hartshorne, 'a secretary from hell', telephone-stalked the professor, bombarding his home with abusive and threatening telephone calls over an 18-month period because she felt she was losing her job to Dr Lundrigan.

Hartshorne left similar messages on the answer phone of Dr Lundrigan accusing her of an affair with the professor, who heads the Centre for Investigative Psychology at Liverpool University.

Hartshorne has told the court that Professor Canter 'mentally raped her' and she was forced to telephone him because she had been met with a wall of silence when she had been trying to find out if her part-time post was to be made full-time.

Harsthorne claimed that the funding for her £18,500 job was going to Dr Lundrigan.

She said that she did not think that either the professor or the doctor, who have both denied they were having an affair, would have felt threatened by the calls.

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