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A teenage girl who launched a malicious online smear campaign against a young man with learning difficulties has been put behind bars.

Shannon Maley, 19, left 20-year-old Kevin Stewart feeling suicidal after creating fake social media profiles in his name and sending herself scores of depraved and threatening messages.

She circulated them around Facebook as part of a carefully-orchestrated campaign to have Kevin jailed after accusing him of sexual assault at Airdrie’s Centenary Park in 2017.

However, he was found not guilty at Airdrie Sheriff Court last November as well as being acquitted on four other sexual assault charges.

And Maley’s scheme backfired spectacularly after she became entangled in her own web of lies, which ultimately led to her pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice and harassing witnesses during Kevin’s trial.

Justice was finally served last week and Kevin says Maley’s resulting eight-month prison sentence has allowed him to “breathe a huge sigh of relief”.

He told the Advertiser: “She deserved prison.

“I felt it was inevitable she would get jailed and I’m happy it’s happened.

“I would have preferred if she got the maximum sentence as I’m not sure eight months is justice for what she put me through but at least she’s been jailed, so I’m satisfied.

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”Hopefully now I can start moving on without worrying about this anymore.”

Maley was also banned from approaching, contacting, or attempting to contact Kevin, which he says is as comforting and reassuring as her prison sentence.

He continued: “She’s a monster that I don’t need to think about anymore.

”She almost destroyed my life but she can’t hurt me now; and if she comes near me when she leaves prison she’ll be going straight back.

”I needed the order just as much as I needed to see her put in jail.”

Maley’s twisted messages poisoned the public’s perception of Kevin so much that he was left frightened to leave his own home because of a deluge of threats issued to him.

He even had to move home three times for “his own safety”.

He told the Advertiser that whenever he walked into Coatbridge town centre he would be met with a barrage of verbal abuse.

Maley’s online lies were shared across the globe and Kevin and his parents even received threatening messages from as far afield as America and Australia.

(Image: Facebook)

Kevin was left so distraught by the situation that he seriously considered jumping out of his 14th storey window in Coatbridge to end his torment.

But after Maley’s admission of guilt and sentencing, Kevin now wants nothing more than to be able to walk through his hometown without fear of retribution.

He said: “‘I was in town last week and nobody said anything to me or shouted abuse.

“It was a nice surprise, but I guess that means people now know what she’s done.

“I won’t be as worried walking down the Main Street anymore.”

Shannon Maley was sentenced to eight months in a young offenders’ institution by Sheriff Derek O’Carroll who told her this was discounted from 10 months because she pled guilty.

The court was “of the opinion no other method of dealing with the accused was appropriate due to the nature and gravity of the offences”.