Former Scots guard dressed in women’s lingerie in terrifying stalking campaign

A former Scots Guards captain who sent photos of himself dressed up in women’s lingerie to a hedge fund executive he met on a dating app during a ‘terrifying’ stalking campaign has been jailed for five years.

Michael Ferndale, 52, became fixated with former sovereign wealth fund employee Kate Watkin and accused her of being a sex worker and people trafficker.

Ms Watkin, who worked for prestigious European hedge fund management company Brevan Howard, met the Sandhurst-educated Scot on the Badoo dating app in April 2022.

She initially found Ferndale – now an ‘incredibly well-connected’ corporate headhunter – to be ‘charming’ and they began dating soon after.

During the relationship she was introduced by Ferndale to his friends in the intelligence community and a number of top company bosses.

Ferndale, who served in Kosovo, Iraq, and Belfast, also took Ms Watkins to an invite-only MI6 dinner at the Army and Navy club on Pall Mall.

But ‘warning signs’ relating to Ferndale’s erratic behaviour quickly surfaced during a ‘genuinely terrifying’ weekend break in Oxfordshire.

Ferndale began threatening to derail Ms Watkin’s career and made several references to selling stories about her to the media as he tried to ‘murder her soul.’

Ms Watkin, daughter of tycoon Karl Watkin said she was eventually forced to flee to Abu Dhabi to get away from her increasingly ‘disturbed’ boyfriend.

After they broke up, Ferndale began sending ‘weird’ messages including emails with picture attachments of himself dressed up in women’s clothing.

Ferndale, who suffers from PTSD, developed an ‘obsession’ with the idea that his former girlfriend was a trafficker of young children.

He denied but was convicted by a jury at Isleworth Crown Court of stalking Ms Watkin between 9 April 2023 and 20 February last year.

At Isleworth Crown Court today (Fri) Ms Watkin described how Ferndale’s ‘terrifying conduct and sustained campaign’ resulted in permanent damage to her reputation.

She wept as she read her impact statement from behind the screen, saying: ‘Michael attempted to strategically dismantle every aspect of my life, contacting any individual, institution, or organisation within my orbit, including my work, university, and professional networking group I helped to establish, and even my bank.

‘His harassment was malicious, slanderous, libellous, and absolutely terrifying for everyone who has been dragged into this by his emails, messages, and phone calls.

‘Michael has conducted a sustained campaign aimed at damaging my reputation, destroying my career, and maintaining control over my life long after the relationship has ended.

‘Michael’s campaign of accusations, blaming and shaming, attempting to reverse my reality, stating I was the liar and the abuser, and the problem in the relationship, makes me question my own judgement and self-worth.

‘I firmly believe that Michael remains a danger to me personally and other women, so I sincerely hope this would be taken into account and reflected in his sentence.’

She said she feels ‘powerless’ about the situation, which had cost her job and ‘sense of security’, losing £200,000 in earnings and having to ‘sofa cruise’ for five months after being made ‘effectively homeless’.

Ms Watkin added: ‘I don’t believe my reputation would ever recover… My personal relationships have been put under huge pressure.’

She said having to give evidence in court was the ‘most traumatic experience of my life’, having to ‘revisit depraved pornographic images’ that were sent to her across two trials.

Ms Watkin said she still experiences ‘panic attacks’ and gets just ‘two to three hours of sleep’ every night as a result, adding: ‘I am exhausted all the time and feel like it would never change.’

The court also heard two further impact statements from Ms Watkin’s mother, who said: ‘My life over the past three years has been a living nightmare.’

She said she saw how Ferndale’s campaign escalated through its impact on her daughter, who ‘seemed paralysed by fear and unable to leave’ the relationship.

Reading her statement, prosecutor Gabriella Lewis said Mrs Watkin recalls once getting a phone call from her daughter, who thought Ferndale had entered her home, saying: ‘She thought Michael was holding Kate hostage.’

She added: ‘Feelings of guilt still haunt me for not being there for her and being able to hug her,’ and said she now suffers hair loss from anxiety caused by someone she had ‘never met’.

Passing sentence Judge Hannah Duncan told Ferndale: ‘I have no doubt what you have caused is very serious distress and psychological damage.

‘You were warned, requested, and begged to stop, but you never did.

‘You set out to destroy her, you accused her of fraud, domestic abuse, being a sex worker, espionage, affairs with friends.

‘You were deliberately trying to destroy all of her friendships so she would be alone and vulnerable.

‘You sought to intimidate, shame, and humiliate her as far and wide as you could. It would be laughable if it were not so awful.

‘It was the stuff of nightmares, akin to the worst type of blackmail. Blackmail had been described as the murder of the soul, and that is what you tried to do.

‘The impact on her was extreme… she lost her job and her personality.

‘From her mother, it was heartbreaking to see her daughter crumple to an anxious gibbering wreck.

The judge added: ‘It would be sad and pathetic if it were not so spiteful and vindictive.’

The judge said she had read several medical reports but ‘rejected’ suggestions that Ferndale’s actions were due to his mental illness which caused him to ‘misread’ the room

Judge Duncan said: ‘You are highly intelligent and manipulative… You didn’t misread anything, you lied.’

She sentenced him to five years in custody but ordered an extended licence period of three years after he is released.

The judge also made a restraining order that is to last indefinitely until further notice.

Ferndale appeared in court today wearing a blue striped shirt and black trousers. He showed no emotion, while his wife wept in the public gallery as the sentence was handed down.

During the eight-day trial at Isleworth Crown Court, Ms Lewis told jurors that Ferndale was initially ‘fun, charming and interesting’ but his relationship with Ms Watkin ‘became dysfunctional.’

Ms Lewis said a trip to the Cotswolds in July 2022 saw him exhibit ‘erratic and aggressive behaviour which was paranoid’.

Then followed ‘emotional manipulation’, including Ferndale falsely alleging she was a sex worker and ‘(telling) her he intended to publicise that false information to her employer and the media.’

Ms Lewis said a ‘more intensive campaign of stalking’ began when the complainant moved to Abu Dhabi after registering interest in her company’s new office in an ‘effort to get away.

Ferndale’s behaviour was described in court as ‘strange, sinister and relentless.’

‘When I met Michael he seemed fun, he was very charming, he had a fascinating life, but there were warning signs very early on’, she told jurors.

Ms Watkin said Ferndale started accusing her of being a ‘people trafficker’ within two weeks of meeting him and said they spent a ‘genuinely terrifying’ time together at a hotel in Oxfordshire.

‘I’m not a doctor, I don’t know what I was witnessing – he told me had PTSD, I had friends in the army, I had a limited understanding of it,’ she said.

Ms Watkin added: ‘He started accusing me of being a people trafficker, I felt very unsafe and I had to get out of the room.’

She said one of the ‘biggest red flags’ from this period – early July 2022 – was Ferndale sending her an image where ‘he’d written my name in black marker pen on his penis.’

Referring to one of the photos Ferndale sent her, she said he was ‘dressed up in women’s lingerie, he put some boots on at one stage’.

Ms Watkin, told the court she sent him a message back saying ‘that’s a bit scary’.

In early December 2022 she took on a role in her company’s new Abu Dhabi office to escape the ‘cycle of chaos’.

She told jurors that Ferndale soon began directly contacting her employer, threatening to take stories about her and her employer Brevan Howard to the national press.

One message, in which Ferndale stated Ms Watkin had ‘left me homeless’, included the threat: ‘I’m definitely now going to the Daily Mail with this story’.

She said she was ‘visibly crumbling’ at work and worried Ferndale would cause trouble for her ‘very discreet multi-billionaire boss’ Alan Howard.

Ms Watkins said she was ‘too scared’ to go the police with evidence of her stalker’s behaviour.

‘It was a very difficult time personally over the previous few years, I had clawed my way back to financial stability, I think that’s why he went after me at work.

‘He knew where the scars were because I told him things in the early days, nearly all of which was used against me ultimately.

She said she was forced to leave Brevan Howard in October 2023 and she later blocked the former soldier from all her online accounts.

But Ferndale continued to harass her with ‘disturbing messages from various different accounts’ and began contacting her close friends and family.

The messages referred in part to Ms Watkins being a ‘travelling companion’, ‘sex worker’ and ‘dominatrix’.

She described how a ‘blissfully happy’ summer with her new partner was interrupted by ‘very weird stuff coming through’ from Ferndale.

‘He was dressed up in women’s lingerie, put some boots on at one stage.’

Asked about photos of Ferndale dressed up as women, Ms Lewis asked: ‘When you received this, what did you think?’

Ms Watkin replied: ‘I mean, what do you think? By this stage I’d had various conversations with my brother who said: ‘When women get killed, this is how it starts’.

‘We did not have an intimate relationship really, we only had intercourse a handful of times – he told me he had been sexually abused as a child so I respected that and tried to make the relationship connect in other ways.

‘That’s why this came about, at no point did I ever ask him to dress up in women’s clothes.

‘He had this whole fixation with psychology, with control, he pushed me to do this psychometric profiling test within a couple of weeks of meeting him.

‘I think this was just a projection of a fantasy.’

Ferndale studied law at Dundee University, where he joined the cadets, later joining Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in 1997 with an offer to join the Scots Guards.

He worked his way up to the rank of captain and served in Kosovo and Nelfast.

Brigadier John Deverell CBE, who served in the British Army for 34 years, described Ferndale as a ‘man of deep honesty’ while giving evidence as a character witness.

He said Ferndale ‘moved in all sorts of circles’ and they shared a ‘very good friend’ in retired military commander General Sir Adrian Bradshaw

But Ferndale was ‘unusually obsessive’, ‘slightly fragile’ and ‘vulnerable’, said the Brigadier.

‘I wouldn’t say he’s at all a mental case.

‘He rightly or wrongly felt (Ms Watkins) was out of order, which is clear from this – he is like a dog with a bone, he won’t stop – it’s a mark of the man.’

Ferndale, of Hugon Road, Fulham, denied but was convicted of one charge of stalking causing serious alarm or distress to Ms Watkin.

According to his LinkedIn profile Ferndale was a Commercial Committee Member of the Lord’s Taverners charity between 2017 and 2021.

ENDS