Stalker ordered to carry out 75 hours' community service

During an earlier trial, at which Clarke was found guilty of breach of the peace and breaching a bail condition, victim Audrey Reid, 42, had broken down in sobs when asked to identify her stalker. She begged prosecutor Gillian More not to force her to look at him in the dock.

When Mrs More insisted, Mrs Reid shook uncontrollably as she pointed her finger at the accused.

She spoke of the horror she suffered when he followed and harassed her despite a court order banning him from making contact after he was convicted of assaulting her in February.

Mrs Reid told Sheriff Jack Davidson that Clarke, of Fauld-burn, Edinburgh, terrorised her, constantly phoning and following her, watching her at home, pushing sweeties through her door, and on one occasion driving his car at her.

The mother-of-three works in the print department of Stewart's Melville College. Clarke had helped her with DIY at her home and a friendship sprang up but it turned sour when his obsession took over and he began to harass her daily.

Mrs Reid described how on March 1, he followed her after she called him a ''sick bully''. She had tried to throw him off her track during a mobile-phone conversation but he tracked her down.

He followed her as she drove away from work and jumped into her passenger seat when she stopped the car. She was so frightened she tried twice to run away - and when he followed - run back to her car to drive off, but she was not fast enough.

He took her car and house keys but, when she threatened to telephone the police, threw them on the ground. As she walked over to pick them up, he drove his car at her.

''I was screaming and hysterical, I was so traumatised I couldn't have cared less what happened. I had just had enough. I was so upset, he frightened the life out of me,'' said Mrs Reid, of Meadowhouse Road, Edinburgh.

Sentence had been deferred for six months after Clarke had been given a six-year non-harassment order.