TV presenter Nicola Thorp spoke for the first time after saying that the person who stalked her for two years has been jailed for 30 months.
The 34-year-old, who played Pat Phelan’s daughter Nicola Rubinstein on the successful ITV soap Coronation Street, revealed that she had been subjected to rape and death threats to her family and how she gave the Met Police a document containing details of the harassment she suffered.
Ravinderjit Dhillon, 30, used 25 online identities to torment the actress. He said that he would sexually abuse Thorp in front of her parents.
He was jailed at Snaresbrook Crown Court in East London for 30 months and given a restraining order.
“I was stalked for two years from 2018 to 2020 by an anonymous man online, although I don’t know if it was ever in real life as well. He made horrendous rape threats, death threats and threats to my family. He sent photos of his genitalia, and I found out yesterday (December 5) one of the reasons why they caught him is that they matched one of the photos of his genitals with what was going on in his bedroom when they actually raided his property to get his devices because he initially denied that it was him.
She added, “He said he had lost his phone and they matched up the background of the photograph to his bedroom. So yeah, he has been jailed.”
Thorp, who is heavily pregnant, told a publication, “My parents got me attacker spray, I got an air horn, and I put extra locks on the boat.”
Thorp previously told the court, “I’ve spent most of my adult life fighting for the rights of women and doing so in the public eye has come with some personal cost. I became the target of the exact behaviour I was standing up against.”
She recalled messages sent by Dhillon describing himself as her ‘grim reaper’, adding, “He sent messages saying, “I’m going to be with you forever”, “I’m your grim reaper”. In one message he said 28 times he wasn’t going to leave me.”
Sentencing Dhillon last week, Judge Rosa Dean said that she was ‘quite sure’ he had targeted Ms. Thorp because of her celebrity alongside her ‘determination to call out abusive and misogynistic behaviour’.
Sentencing Dhillon, Dean said, “Over a period of two years you stalked Nicola Thorp between 2018 and 2020. You were finally arrested in December 2021. The investigation took some time and length, which highlights the difficulty of bringing perpetrators of this type to justice.”
