Executive ordered to pay BAFTA-nominated director £4,000

An advertising executive who falsely claimed she was stalked and filmed by a three-time BAFTA nominated TV comedy director has been ordered to pay him £4,000 in compensation.

Sophia Owen, 36, was convicted by a judge of harassing Misha Manson-Smith after a trial at Stratford Magistrates’ Court.

Owen had falsely accused Misha Manson-Smith of harassing her to build a ‘false narrative’ and even applied for a High Court injunction against him.

But District Judge James Richardson found her guilty of harassment and sentenced her to a two year community order, 100 hours of unpaid work.

He said she has shown no remorse and came close to going to jail.

Owen works in New York as an advertising account director and will have fly back to London to carry out her community service.

He also made a five year restraining order against contacting Mr Manson-Smith or referring to him on social media and ordered her to pay him £4,000 compensation.

The judge also banned her from entering the London Borough of Hackney for two years.

He had found Owen’s claims to be fabricated and malicious.

She claimed he used his lawnmower outside her home to make as much noise as he could and would screech his car tyres to annoy her.

Mr Manson-Smith, who was made has made award-winning comedies and documentaries for Amazon Studios, Netflix and Channel 4 faced an expensive court battle over the faked allegations.

Owen’s father, music producer Mark Arthurworrey, 68, owns the freehold of a converted house in Dalston, east London, where Mr Manson-Smith had lived in the ground floor flat.

Mr Manson-Smith, 48, and his journalist wife Alex, 44, bought the ground floor flat (108A) in 2014 and lived there until 2019 when they began renting it out.

Owen made two calls to police in May 2020 and two more in September 2020 claiming
Mr Manson-Smith was being ‘abusive and threatening’.

Owen claimed Mr Manson-Smith had cameras in the basement that pointed towards the entrance to her home and that he used them to ‘spy on her.’

She claimed she had seen Mr Manson-Smith ‘literally hundreds of times during this period’ and ‘regularly drove of walked past her house or stalked her.’

Mr Manson-Smith produced evidence to support his case including GPS records from his phone and car.

Owen had applied for an interim injunction against the victim but it was refused by the High Court last February.

Mr Manson-Smith described the experience as ‘profound, stressful and unnerving, time-consuming and costly’.

He said Owen’s behaviour has had a ‘really really profound’ impact on him, affecting his career and family life.

Judge Richardson said Owen was ‘building a narrative’ against Mr Manson-Smith.

‘It is hard to see how making false allegations against someone in support of a High Court injunction wouldn’t amount to harassment,’ he said.

‘It’s clear to me that this is harassment behaviour.’

The judge said the harassment was ‘part of a deliberate campaign against Mr Manson-Smith’ intended to achieve an injunction.

Owen, of Forest Road, Dalston, denied but was convicted of harassing Mr Manson-Smith between 11 May 2020 and 23 December 2020.

Her father had a successful 25-year career as a music producer, working with acts including Earth, Wind and Fire, Aswad and Annie Lennox.

Mr Manson-Smith, is a British director, writer and producer in film, television and commercials. According to his online CV he has worked with Ali G star Sacha Baron Cohen and directed Hollwood star Michael Sheen in a short movie called Barbados.

The couple had accused Owens’ father Mr Arthurworrey of dumping a ‘large volume of rubbish’, including a mattress, in their garden, creating ‘noise nuisance’ and turning off the utilities at their flat.

Mr Arthurworrey contended the front garden did not rightfully belong to the couple but was in fact his.

But after taking him to court, the couple won £273,000 damages last summer and sought an injunction to ban the music producer from interfering with them or their property.

According to a probation report, Owen does not accept the judge’s verdict and ‘strongly believes’ that she is the victim of the case.

She has been a creative producer for the past three years and earns £1,321 a week.

Owen came to the UK from New York but became stranded when the pandemic hit and moved into her father’s property at 108B.

Mr Manson-Smith opted to read out his victim impact statement in court.

He said Owen’s harassment has had a ‘devastating impact on the lives of our whole family’ since 2015.

Mr Manson-Smith read from a contemporaneous email which said: ‘Alex and I are in a state of total shock and have been up half the night in a panic about it all.’

He said Owen allowed her dog to attack his pet in Victoria Park.

Describing the impact of the harassment Mr Manson-Smith said Owen caused floods and damage to the building costing several thousands of pounds, ‘but she has cost us tens of thousands of pounds by derailing our working lives’.

The case has ‘consumed’ his children’s entire childhood, ‘robbing us of the simple joys we should be taking for granted’, the court heard.
ends