A 25-year old student hacked his ex-girlfriend's Snapchat account and sent private sexually explicit pictures and videos of her to her contacts after he 'snapped' with jealousy has been jailed.
Kane Augustus-Stacey accessed his ex-partner's Universal Credit, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat accounts following the end of their relationship. A court heard how Augustus-Stacey 'went to a dark place' after reading a Snapchat message about her going on a date, and sent the messages 'to upset her'.
Appearing at Minshull Street Court today (November 16), the 25-year old was sentenced to six months in custody for stalking involving serious alarm or distress, and disclosing private sexual images .
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The court heard how Augustus-Stacey and the victim met in Blackpool, where he was studying Theatre at university, in 2017, before starting a relationship in April 2018. The pair moved in together in the summer of 2018, in what was initially a 'positive' relationship. Prosecuting, Miss Kenny said their relationship later broke down, and they eventually broke up.
On May 31, the victim made an application for Universal Credit. The following day, her support worker noticed the application was not active while on a phone discussion with the victim, who realised she had received a notification from the account telling her that someone had logged into her account while she had been asleep. She then noticied the same notification for her Facebook and Instagram accounts.
The victim was aware that Augustus-Stacey knew some of her passwords, and suspected he was responsible. She contacted him, telling him she 'knew what he was doing and told him to stop'. The court heard he admitted to accessing her accounts, and the victim made a complaint to the police and changed her passwords.
One hour before she was due to meet with police, on June 2, the victim heard a knock on her door. When she answered, nobody was present but a bag containing a wifi box, which Augustus-Stacey had taken in the break-up, was left.
Just a few days later, on June 5, she woke up to find further notifications that someone had logged into her accounts, this time including her Snapchat. When she regained access to her Snapchat account, she discovered conversations with messages that she did not send - including 'naked photos' of herself, which had also been saved to her camera roll within the app.
She also found someone had saved sexually explicit videos to the camera roll, and in a victim impact statement, described feeling 'embarrassed and ashamed' that the pictures and videos had been shared without her consent. As she continued to look through her message history, she found more messages and explicit images that she had not sent.
Miss Kenny told the court the victim was 'distressed' by the situation, and suspected Augustus-Stacey was responsible because of his previous behaviour. After she reported the incident to the police, the court heard how Augustus-Stacey made 'several attempts' to contact her, before sending her a message telling her to 'enjoy your date' - a date the victim said he could only have known about by reading her Snapchat conversations.
Augustus-Stacey was arrested, and the court heard how in a police interview he said he 'knew why' he was there and 'knew' he had 'done wrong'. He insisted that his accessing her Universal Credit account was simply to notify them of their break-up, but when asked why he had sent the images, he told officers he had a 'breakdown' and 'snapped' when he found out she was going on a date, telling them: "I did it to upset her".
Defending, Mr Bowker told the court that the pair's relationship had come to a 'sad and abrupt end', and that Augustus-Stacey 'did not deal with the end of that relationship very well'. He said the 25-year old had lost his home after the break-up, and had been living in a hotel.
"This was a blot following a breakdown of a relationship," he said, telling the court how Augustus-Stacey was of previously good character, and had been studying to become an actor in Blackpool. Since his arrest, Mr Bowker said the defendant had 'lost his confidence in that area', and did admit that his behaviour was 'wrong and criminal'.
Sentencing, Judge Green said that Augustus-Stacey had failed to 'accept' the end of his relationship with the victim, and this led to the 'commission of these offences'.
"You obviously had some explicit photos and videos of her and put some of those onto her Snapchat camera roll so they could be seen by her friends and contacts that had access to that," he said. "A number of people received those images. She said it has caused her a lot of distress in many different ways.
"The seriousness of it is that those pictures and videos can never be unseen by those other people and she knows that."
He told the court the messages had been sent for 'maximum distress or humiliation', and the images were 'circulated widely' in a way that required 'planning'.
Augustus-Stacey, of Wood Street, Ashton-under-Lyne, was sentenced to six months in custody and had a restraining order placed against him and the victim for five years.
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