A man has been jailed for driving his wife to the brink of suicide by impersonating her school boyfriend and subjecting her to an extended campaign of stalking.

Paul Playle, 43, set up email and Facebook accounts in the name of Anthony Reynolds that he used to send messages to his wife, Amanda. In those messages he said he was watching her and had a detailed knowledge of her personal life.

At the same time, Playle played the role of a loving husband by comforting his wife while she became a recluse in fear of her stalker. “To think it was the one person I believed I could always trust,” Amanda Playle said after her husband was jailed. “I no longer trust anyone anymore.”

Sentencing Playle to three and a half years at Lewes crown court, Judge Christine Henson said the evidence was “overwhelming”, adding: “You are the author of your own fate. You watched your wife effectively crumble before you because of the fear she was experiencing from this online abuse.”

His wife, a nursery worker, said she was affected so badly by the “unbelievable” ordeal that she had considered suicide. In a victim impact statement read to the court, she said she would never understand why it happened, adding: “I am terrified to leave the house, go to work or the shop across the road. I panic when my phone goes off.”



The prosecutor, Gareth Burrows, described the lengths to which Playle went to humiliate and control his wife, while at the same time comforting her, as a “worrying and significant feature” of his offending.

In the messages, sent between December 2015 and June 2017, Playle would question his wife about previous sexual encounters, calling her a “slag”. He made comments about being able to see her jogging.

He hid her passport to try to stop her going on holiday with friends. In one message, sent when she was out shopping and holding a new bag, he said: “Nice handbag, do you want to meet in Starbucks for a coffee?”

Playle would also contact his wife’s parents and colleagues, as well as hack into her own accounts to send similar messages.

He was caught after sending an image of the entrance to Gatwick airport. Police tracked his car arriving at the terminal and spotted him on CCTV taking the picture. Some of the emails harassing his wife were found to have been sent through his home internet router.

Playle denied the crime, claiming he had been “stitched up”. But a jury took less than 30 minutes to convict him of stalking and coercive and controlling behaviour. Standing in the dock in a blue T-shirt, Playle, of Bexhill, East Sussex, lowered his head and cried.

Amanda Playle and her husband met when they were 16. She said she was faithful to him during their marriage. “We had hard times but thought we had a stable family,” she said. “My children are devastated. My eldest daughter is a totally different person since the trial.”