A man whose “appalling behaviour” saw him cable-tie a tracking device to his wife’s car and install a covert camera in her home during a two-month stalking campaign avoided jail on Tuesday.
Last June, Shaun Dougan (41) was sentenced to an eight-month term for stalking.
However, following a plea at Antrim County Court, Judge Philip Gilpin replaced it with an enhanced combination order (ECO).
As Dougan stood in the dock and his ex-wife watched by video link, the judge ordered him to complete two years probation and 100 hours of community service.
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Calling the conduct “deplorable”, Judge Gilpin said Dougan “deserved to be punished with a severe sentence” but noted that, unlike the District Judge in the lower court, he had a psychiatric report showing Dougan was suffering from depressive illness that caused “delusional belief in relation to his wife and the care of his children”.
Dougan, of Clooney Road, Ballymena, Co Antrim, who runs a family furniture shop in Portglenone, admitted stalking between February 23rd and April 7th last year, causing his victim “fear, alarm or substantial distress”.
In April last year his ex-wife found a tracking device attached to her car. Initially there was no evidence linking Dougan, but two days later she produced proof the device had been cable-tied behind her rear wheel.
She also reported that in the preceding weeks Dougan had accessed her Instagram account, read private messages with a male friend, then confronted her at her home in an “irate state” shouting slurs including “flea-ridden bitch” and threatening to disclose her messages to colleagues.
Having taken screenshots of the messages, Dougan sent them to her, leaving her “embarrassed and distressed”. He then sent multiple WhatsApp messages referring to the screenshots and their children in ways she felt degraded her as a mother.
A colleague later disclosed that Dougan had also circulated the messages at her workplace, forcing her to report the matter to her manager. She was left humiliated, had to take time off work, and on one day alone was bombarded with a dozen calls and 55 WhatsApp messages.
Dougan threatened to share the screenshots with neighbours if she ignored him.
Days later, after finding the tracker, the victim noticed a strange plug behind her TV linked to an “Amazon Blink Model 2” device. Speaking with her manager about the incidents, she realised it was part of a covert surveillance system. Searching her home, she discovered a hidden camera on top of her kitchen cupboards with its LED light taped over.
Dougan was arrested, refused to answer questions, and spent a month in custody before bail was granted.
In mitigation, defence barrister Stephen Toal stressed that Dougan had admitted guilt at the outset and argued prison was neither “necessary nor proportionate”.
He urged the judge to impose an ECO, insisting it was not a “soft option” but a form of intensive supervision that offered rehabilitation.
Mr Toal said Dougan had already begun counselling and therapy, and a consultant psychiatrist’s report confirmed his mental health deteriorated during the breakdown of his marriage, leaving him delusional.
Those delusions, he argued, led Dougan to “make bad decisions” uncharacteristic of a man with a previously clear record.
“Good people make mistakes ... we see it repeatedly every single day,” Mr Toal told the court. “But when good people make mistakes, do we, as a society, lock them up or do we try to rehabilitate them? That’s what this appeal is about.”
Judge Gilpin accepted the case merited custody but said the psychiatric report “puts a different complexion” on matters.
Imposing the ECO, he issued a stern warning that any breach of the order, or the five-year restraining order, would bring Dougan back before the court “undoubtedly facing an immediate custodial sentence”.
