Meath councillor’s relief as stalker arrested

A business woman and county councillor, who is standing in the next general election as an independent, has spoken of her relief after gardaí arrested a phone stalker who had made her life ‘a living nightmare’ over the last two years’

Sharon Keogan, from Duleek is a former member of the national executive of Fianna Fáil, and will be a candidate in the Meath East constituency next spring.

She revealed: “This whole thing began on August 23, 2013. I received a phone call, with the caller’s number withheld and when I answered it this guy started telling me how much he loved me and how much he wanted to be with me.

“Initially I thought it was either a joke or someone with way too much drink taken, and I was prepared to pass it off as that.

“But then the calls kept coming and coming - on one particular day at the height of it I got 94 calls from this man - some of them quite sexually explicit, I told him in no uncertain terms where to go with himself, but he ignored that.

“I even resorted to getting friends to answer my phone when a number wasn’t displayed, but he just kept telling them how much he loved me and that I was the only woman for him.

“This went on for maybe a month before I decided I had to go to the guards, and I have to say from day one they were brilliant, I was half-thinking they would imagine I was exaggerating things but, straight away, they allayed all my concerns on that score and took things extremely seriously.

“However, even while they were working on the case, the calls kept coming. I even got a load of them on Christmas Day and being honest I was scared, and I mean really scared.”

Ms Keogan said: “This guy seemed to know my movements, he could ring me and tell me where I was or had just been, if I was out in a restaurant or in the pub that I ran in Duleek he knew it - and that was starting to worry me.

“I live in a remote enough area and, when I’d leave the pub at night to go home, I was on high alert because I didn’t have a clue whether this man would attack me or even be waiting for me outside my house.

“I was absolutely petrified over this, as were my three kids, they were seriously worried about my safety.

To Ms Keogan’s relief, gardaí arrested a man in recent weeks almost two years after the first call came through.

“Relief is not nearly a strong enough word, it was like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders, but even now although I am aware of his name, I do not know what the individual looks like and that’s a horrible feeling.”