The former fiancé of the late TV star Caroline Flack has been jailed for a campaign of harassment against GB News presenter Dan Wootton, with a judge telling him: “This must stop.”
Judge Jeremy Richardson QC, sitting at Sheffield Crown Court, said Andrew Brady’s claims that Wootton was in some way responsible for Flack’s death were “wholly irrational”, noting that the former executive editor of The Sun was actually a friend of the Love Island presenter, who died in 2020.
Judge Richardson told Brady (pictured) his attacks on Wootton, a Mail Online columnist, had “everything to do with your craving for celebrity status and your irritation that the press were not in the least interested in your somewhat uninteresting life.”
Brady, 31, of Cross Bedford Street, Sheffield, admitted harassment at a hearing earlier this week and was on Friday jailed for four months.
Judge Richardson noted that, given the time the defendant served on remand, he would be released in the “very near future”.
He imposed a ten-year restraining order banning Brady from contacting Wootton, posting anything about him online, or going within 200 yards of his home or workplace.
Describing some of the social media posts and messages about Wootton as “utterly outrageous”, Judge Richardson warned Brady he faces a prison sentence measured in years if he breaches the order.
According to the court hearing earlier in the week, Brady’s harassment of Wootton took place between 13 February and 28 April last year and included using Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram, online blogs and Youtube to cause the journalist “alarm and distress”.
The charge revealed Brady had harassed Wootton by using social media to accuse him of “being a sex offender and murderer”, to compare him with Weinstein, to ask for their disagreements to be “settled by violence” and to repeatedly state his intention to end Wootton’s career and ensure he would be jailed.
Brady also invited his social media followers “to assist you in your crusade,” the charge stated.
He posted on Instagram: “I feel like getting rid of him once and for all today” and left Wootton Whatsapp voicemails threatening “to deal with” him when the police were not around and saying he would “go away for a very long time”.
Brady also used Snapchat to post an explicit picture of himself and invite Wootton to engage in sexual activity.
Picture: PA Wire/Ian West
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