In a precedent-setting ruling, a judge has granted an injunction against a woman who stalked a well-known broadcaster for 15 years, claiming that she and the late Prime Minister Michael Manley are her parents.

The ruling immediately brings hope for relief through the courts to what is suspected to be a large number of Jamaicans who are being harassed outside of domestic relationships, and potentially could lead to stalking being recognised as an offence in Jamaica.

The case has not been publicised before now, possibly because it was heard in chambers, and the broadcaster has asked the Observer not to publish her name, to spare her and her family further anguish.

“I endured literal hell for 15 years,” the broadcaster said after the June 12 ruling which bars the woman from coming within 200 yards of her and to desist from further acts of harassment.

“I dreaded going to church, to work or any other public place that was announced, because this woman would be there to harass me.”

By means of incessant phone calls to the complainant’s home and workplace, and lying-in-wait for her at work, at church and other public places at which she appeared in her professional capacity, the accused, named in court documents as Charmaine Senior, made herself a constant nuisance to the broadcaster and her real daughter.

“As late as Mother’s Day this year, she sent me a card declaring her love for me as her mother and craving that I accept her as my daughter,” the broadcaster told the Observer. “It got so bad that I was forced to stop attending my regular church where I worshipped for 30 years,” she complained.

She hoped that her case would provide legal grounds for redress to people who are being stalked, even though the ruling did not use the word.

In granting the injunction against Senior, Supreme Court Justice Reid relied on the written judgement of Justice Bryan Sykes who heard the broadcaster’s ex parte application for injunction, private nuisance and tort of harassment on March 16, 17 and 24 this year.

Sykes said in court documents that Senior, who started harassing the broad-caster in 1991, believed that she was the abandoned daughter of the said broad-caster and Michael Manley, although the broadcaster emphatically denied having had any relationship with Manley and definitely did not have his daughter.

Manley, three-times prime minister of Jamaica, died in March 1997, having resigned in 1992 as head of government due to ill-health.

“There is evidence to suggest that Ms Senior is suffering from a psychiatric illness and that she has been treated and is being treated by psychiatrists,” Sykes said in his judgement.

He also noted that there was no indication that her phone calls threatened violence, “but are clearly annoying and upsetting…”

Reid made his ruling on June 12 after the accused woman agreed to cease any further advances towards the complainant. However, should the woman break the terms of the injunction, then she can be hauled before the courts to face whatever penalty that is deemed necessary.

Within the broader legal spectrum, this case may have some implications for the issue of the continual harassment of citizens by individuals, as Jamaica currently has no legislation that recognises stalking specifically.

Members of a family or common-law union may seek protection orders against each other at the Family Court or under the Domestic Violence Act. But with Justice Sykes’s judgement having determined that in Jamaica harassment is now a tort, Reid was able to make his landmark ruling that provides relief beyond domestic relationships.

Lawyers may now be able to recommend the case to a judge on the principle that the issue of private nuisance has been addressed by the court on a prior occasion, and that their matter be dealt with in similar fashion as that of the broadcaster and the woman harassing her, an attorney told the Observer.

Should the lawyer require any specific information, reference can be made to the minutes of the in-chambers matter.

– With additional reporting by Vaughn Davis.

(See the full text of Justice Sykes’ judgement in the Sunday Observer).