Barrister and wife convicted of stalking ‘chav’ mistress

A barrister and his lawyer wife are facing jail and the end of their careers for hounding the woman who had an affair with the husband.

Jonathan Simpson, 48, and property lawyer wife Katherine Simpson, 49, sent letters to the then-pregnant woman’s family and former partner despite police warnings.

The couple lived in upmarket Winchester and Mrs Simpson claimed the woman was a ‘Southampton chav’ who gave her husband herpes which he passed to her.

The letters referred to the victim’s ‘love of fisting’ and claimed she had ‘scooped sperm’ from the kitchen floor to try and get pregnant after sex with Mr Simpson.

Mr Simpson was even sending the woman flowers after being told by police not to contact her while his wife was ringing her to shout ‘c***’ down the phone repeatedly.

The barrister told the court:’I felt like a drug addict, like a crack addict I had to keep going back for more.’

Jurors at Southwark Crown Court today (fri) convicted the Simpsons of stalking involving series alarm or distress by majority verdicts.

Mr Simpson hung his head and squinted as the verdicts were announced.

Sasha Wass QC, for Mr Simpson, asked for the sentencing to be adjourned so that reports can be prepared on the couple.

Judge Alistair McCreath said: ‘I won’t deprive them of that mitigation or any other mitigation the defence might place before me.’

The 18 month on-off affair started after a chance meeting in Southampton’s Apple Store which ended with Mr Simpson and the woman exchanging email addresses.

Two weeks later they went on their first date and kissed, signaling what Mr Simpson described as the ‘beginning of a slippery slope’.

‘All I said throughout the first tranche of the relationship with [the other woman] in so far as my relationship was concerned was that it was perfect but for the fact that I had lost the sexual relationship with my wife,’ he explained.

He sobbed as he added: ‘I never lost my love for Katie, I just couldn’t make it happen in that department.’

After a number of breaks the affair came to an end abruptly in Autumn 2014 but Mr Simpson continued to try to contact the woman.

This led to him being given a harassment notice and a restraining order after he tried to call her from a pay phone.

Mrs Simpson sent three letters to the woman in a week long period around Christmas 2014 – just weeks after her husband was given the restraining order.

Mrs Simpson described the mistress as a ‘chavvy woman from Southampton with fake boobs’ and labelled her boyfriend a ‘thug’ who should be kept in a cage.

The woman told the court she was left feeling ‘degraded, threatened that I can’t live in my home when I want to’.

She added: ‘Every day I felt panic and dread when I woke up, every night I went to sleep thinking and I have nightmares thinking what’s going to happen next?’

Letters were sent to the woman’s brother, sister-in-law and the father of her child which included ‘intimate’ information about the woman and her affair.

Each letter specifically told the recipient not to tell the woman about it – knowing that they would.

A letter sent from Mrs Simpson to the father of the woman’s child in January 2015 claimed the mistress had ‘a lot to learn about affairs with married men and telling lies’.

Mrs Simpson explicitly wrote that she wanted the woman to drop the restraining order and that she ‘stay out of Winchester’.

‘If she agrees or chooses to meet these requests she will find all her problems over,’ the letter added.

It also referred to a number of graphic incidents, including the woman’s ‘love of fisting’, that her ‘orifices were penetrated without protection.’

Mr Simpson alluded to a book which he claimed he was writing and had publishers interested in that would reveal details of his affair.

The barrister turned up at the woman’s house drunk one night making claims about anal sex and walked away muttering about ‘stirring the porridge’ repeatedly.

Another letter sent by Mrs Simpson to the woman’s sister in law read: ‘Her lies to the police will threaten hers and [her child’s] well-being forever.’

One night in December 2014 police turned up at the Simpson family home to discuss events and the conversation was covertly filmed.

In the footage Mrs Simpson can be heard saying: ‘This woman is a chavvy woman from Southampton with fake boobs – we shouldn’t be mixing with people like that.

‘Lying to the police is something we do not do, certainly not in our echelon of society.’

As well as repeatedly using the phrase ‘bunny boiler’ Mrs Simpson said it was ‘like Glenn Close’ referring to a character in the film ‘Fatal Attraction’.

Mrs Simpson continued: ‘She is a single mother with fake boobs living off benefits – she obviously makes a habit of pursuing men.

‘We have been trapped by a f—ing chav.’

After being handed the restraining order Mr Simpson turned up at the woman’s child’s school in an effort to prove that his affair was more than a ‘brief fling’, as she had described in her police statement.

The barrister was planning to ‘leaflet parents outside’ the school to prove he had been there on several prior occasions.

He also bumped into the woman’s partner on a train and was ‘talking loudly about his sexual relationship with her’.

Mr Simpson admitted being in love with the woman and told police about a
‘sperm-scooping incident’.

‘At one point she tried to scoop my sperm into her vagina on her kitchen floor.

‘I shagged her basically everywhere in that house and when I came back in she was scooping it into her vagina.’

Mrs Simpson told the court she caught herpes as a result of the woman’s ‘bizarre sexual practices’.

The couple claimed throughout that they were on a ‘fact-finding mission’ by sending the letters to try and get the restraining order removed.

The Simpsons, both of (9) Clifton Terrace, Winchester, were each found guilty of a single count of stalking involving serious alarm or distress.

Mr Simpson was cleared of acting in breach of a restraining order.

The pair will be sentenced on a date to be fixed.
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