An obsessive woman has been jailed for five years after she tried to destroy the life of a businessman after he turned her down for sex. Farah Dan, also known as Farah Damji, 49, from Pimlico, harassed an engineering director and volunteer church warden after he twice refused her advances after they met in October 2013. Police said the man, aged in his 40s, lost his job while his home life was severely affected by a “co-ordinated” effort to destroy his life.
They met on a business arrangement through an internet site, following which, Dan made 186 hoax calls and texts within three weeks to her victim after he refused sexual contact with her at a Christmas dinner two months later. She had tried to seduce the man during their first meeting to discuss social housing but the pair decided to keep their relationship professional.
Using fake aliases to report issues at the company the victim worked for, Dan sent sexually explicit messages to his 16-year-old son and emailed his wife claiming she had “compromising” pictures of him with several women. In a separate message, she warned the wife, "Look after your children."
Kingston Crown Court heard the victim also received several threats of sexual violence which included his six-year-old daughter.
Additionally, Dan made contact with the vicar at the victim’s local parish claiming he was having an affair and that she was pregnant by the victim. She also contacted the press using a fake name, asking them to write a story which exposed the victim as a married churchgoer who used dating websites.
Police attended her home in January 2014 to arrest her but she handed herself into police four days later. She was charged with stalking under new laws passed in 2012.
Dan was bailed by Wimbledon Magistrates but resumed her vicious campaign against the victim by contacting his business associates and publishing allegations of domestic abuse. She was arrested and further charged in March 2014. Police received a separate allegation of harassment from a man in his 50s which led Dan to be charged with stalking again a month later. During her trial at Kingston Crown Court, Dan admitted stalking the man in his 40s and was found guilty of the offence. Previously found guilty of stalking the man in his 50s in February last year.
Investigating officer PC Vincent Chan, said: "This has been an extremely complex case of stalking with Dan using a number of aliases via multiple social media accounts and mobiles in a planned and co-ordinated effort to utterly destroy the home, social, religious and work life of one of her victims. Dan’s sentence is a reflection of how seriously the judicial system, and more importantly, society acknowledge such criminal behaviour. The amendment to the harassment laws in 2012 was designed precisely to acknowledge and recognise this style of severe and malicious behaviour to disrupt a victim’s day-to-day life. The legal system understands the psychological impact of such campaigns of stalking as much as the more obvious forms of violence and physical threats.”
