This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities...
Necessary
Always Enabled
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Non-necessary
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
SAVE & ACCEPT
    • Politics
    • Transport
    • Lifestyle
    • Community
    • Business
    • Crime
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Education
    • Sport
    • Harrogate
    • Ripon
    • Knaresborough
    • Boroughbridge
    • Pateley Bridge
    • Masham
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts

Interested in advertising with us?

Advertise with us

  • News & Features
  • Your Area
  • What's On
  • Offers
  • Newsletter
  • Podcasts
  • Politics
  • Transport
  • Lifestyle
  • Community
  • Business
  • Crime
  • Environment
  • Health
  • Education
  • Sport
Advertise with us
Subscribe
  • Home
  • Latest News

We want to hear from you

Tell us your opinions and views on what we cover

Contact us
Connect with us
  • About us
  • Advertise your job
  • Correction and complaints
Download on App StoreDownload on Google Play Store
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Statement
  • Comments Participation T&Cs
Trust In Journalism

Copyright © 2020 The Stray Ferret Ltd, All Rights Reserved

Site by Show + Tell

Subscribe to trusted local news

In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

  • Subscription costs less than £1 a week with an annual plan.

Already a subscriber? Log in here.

24

Jan 2024

Last Updated: 23/01/2024

Harrogate man jailed for stalking and strangulation

by Nick Towle

| 24 Jan, 2024
Comment

0

image-3-3

A notorious Harrogate man waged a relentless stalking campaign against his ex-partner in which he harried her on social media, strangled her and left a crushed-up Viagra tablet outside her home in the hope that her dog would eat it.

John Christian Lister, 33, couldn’t accept the end of his relationship with the victim in December 2022 and proceeded to make her life a misery, York Crown Court heard.

Her ordeal began on April 16 last year when she was awoken just after midnight by her dog barking.

Prosecutor Brooke Morrison said that when the victim went to investigate, she found that her front gate had been damaged.

The following morning, the intruder, who turned out to be Lister, sent her a text message which read: “I turned up last night.”

He later apologised and said he would replace the damaged gate, after which the victim, who was named in court, reactivated her Facebook account and unblocked him.

But on May 18, he sent her several “insulting” Snapchat messages while asking her to get back together with him. He then went to her home, banged on the front door and emptied her wheelie bins on the front lawn.

Nine days later, the victim was on a night out with friends when she came across Lister who was initially friendly, but when they bumped into each other a second time that night, he badgered her to get back with him, swore at her when she refused, pushed her and “stormed off”.

Meanwhile, she continued to be bombarded with menacing messages from Lister or “third parties”.

Ms Morison said Lister even contacted some of the victim’s friends, urging them to persuade her to “unblock” him from her social media accounts.

On June 26, he went to her home and “crushed a Viagra tablet on her front porch with the intention that her dog would eat it”.

In November, the victim was out in town with a friend when Lister came up to them outside a bar in Parliament Street. First, he threatened her friend, then he pushed the victim in the chest and shoved her friend out of the way. Ms Morrison said:

“He put his hood up and ran towards them, grabbed (the victim) by the throat and began strangling her with one hand while pulling her hair with the other."


She said that Lister was pinning the victim to a shop window while pulling her hair. He then left the scene and as he walked away, shouted: “You better watch your house.”

Police were called out and officers arrested Lister a few streets away. He was charged with stalking, assault, intentional strangulation and damaging the victim’s property.

Interrupting court hearing


He admitted the offences and appeared for sentence today in a belligerent mood, frequently interrupting the court hearing, including by questioning parts of the prosecution case.

In a statement read out by the prosecution in court, the victim said Lister’s unrelenting behaviour had caused her great anxiety and fear to the extent that she was “afraid to leave home to go into town”.

She felt scared to be home alone and had even changed the route on which she walked her dogs. She was “always looking over her shoulder” and was now taking anti-depressants.

Lister, who had been remanded in custody following his arrest, had a track record for serious violence, his rap sheet comprising 23 previous offences including grievous bodily harm, being drunk and disorderly, threatening behaviour, battery, drugs possession and a wounding for which he received a three-year jail sentence in 2014.

Defence barrister Kelleigh Lodge said that Lister now “fully accepted” the relationship was over and was genuinely sorry for his behaviour.

She said the offences were linked to his excessive alcohol use at the time.

Judge Sean Morris banished Lister from the court before sentence due to the Harrogate man’s petulant behaviour in the dock.

Lister, of Harewood Road, was taken down to the cells before Mr Morris, the Recorder of York, sentenced him to 18 months’ jail for the stalking and strangulation offences.

Lister was also given a five-year restraining order banning him from contacting the victim and going within 100 metres of her address.




Read more:



  • Man jailed for attacking woman in Harrogate

  • Leeds player fined for using mobile phone while driving in Harrogate