Spennymoor Woman Sentenced For Facebook Harassment

A woman from County Durham's been sentenced for sending offensive Facebook messageds to the family of missing toddler Katrice Lee

Newton Aycliffe Magistrates' Court heard how the defendant had believed she was the missing girl and had made contact with the family. 

When a DNA test proved she was not Katrice, Wright continued to send messages to a Facebook page set up to help the search for the girl, who would now also be 33. Wright ignored a police warning to stop and was charged after sending 12 messages in a six-week period last autumn. She sent a further message in breach of a court-imposed bail condition.

Wright, who has a personality disorder and has been diagnosed as bi-polar, said in one distressing message her mother told her an uncle had ``brought her a little girl because her family did not want her''. In another rambling email, she claimed: ``I was brought over from Germany. Will you please help me look into this. It's a cover-up.'' Most offensively she wrote in another: ``You lost your daughter over a packet of crisps, you make me sick.'' 

Katrice went missing from a shop near an Army base in Paderborn where her father Richard was serving with the King's Royal Hussars. 

Katrice's mother Sharon, from Gosport in Hampshire, and father, from Hartlepool, believed their daughter was snatched and could still be alive. 

Katrice's sister Natasha Lee, 39, wrote a victim statement which described Wright as ``pure evil''. 

Wright, 33, from Hillside Court, Spennymoor, County Durham, admitted the charge and in an unusual move was sentenced via a videolink while she sat in another court. District Judge Martin Walker ordered her to pay £200 compensation each to Katrice's mother Sharon and sister out of her benefits. He also imposed a ``draconian'' restraining order to prevent Wright from contacting the family, posting on Katrice's Facebook page, not to make public comments about the missing girl or her family, and not to change her own Facebook name or set up a new account. He told the defendant: ``It (the harassment) stops today for the sake of the family. ``It stops so you can focus on your own life rather than those of somebody else.''