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It began with an angry voice-mail message and an email warning MPP Lisa MacLeod of the “consequences” of the Ford government’s autism plan, sent the same day a crowd of outraged parents picketed her Barrhaven office, decrying the cuts.

The threats escalated until MacLeod was told in one email, “You’d better have bodyguards and home security for the rest of your life. Because if I can get to you, I won’t be able to stop myself.”

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The first of dozens of threatening emails addressed to MacLeod, the Ontario minister of children, community and social services, was sent Feb. 8 under the subject line “The $140,000 cap has to go.”

It was signed, “Yours hatefully, Rebecca Reid.”

“You have singlehandedly destroyed my life and my son’s life,” the mother wrote in another email to MacLeod two days later. “I’ll be honest. I think you should pay for this with your life.”

The threatening tone of the emails escalated, and continued even after police visited her home and asked her to stop.