Jail ex-politician over poison pen campaign, says victim

Ex-Labour councillor Gerard Woodhouse pleaded guilty to harassing ex-party colleague Christine Banks with abusive anonymous cards in the post

A senior Liverpool Labour councillor who was the victim of a hate mail campaign by a former party colleague has said she received up to 100 abusive cards and letters from him.

Christine Banks told the BBC some of the anonymous, expletive-ridden letters sent by Gerard Woodhouse included reference to the death of her adult daughter.

On Friday, Woodhouse, 62, of Mayfield Close in Anfield, pleaded guilty at Liverpool Magistrates' Court to harassment without violence against Banks, and will be sentenced in December.

Banks, 75, said: "I think he should go to jail for what he did."

The court heard Banks received up to five cards a day, sent through the post using counterfeit stamps.

They would come in envelopes with typed address labels on them.

Some of the cards referred to her as "Baby Jane", in an apparent allusion to the main character of the 1962 psychological thriller Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Christine Banks said one of the letters from Woodhouse made reference to her late daughter's death

Banks said: "I had to keep it from my husband and children for two years. I was running to get the post when it arrived to stop my grandkids opening them thinking they were birthday cards.

"The worst thing for me was having to hide it, knowing the worry it would have caused my family, and the impact it would have had on them."

She said she started receiving the cards in 2023, about a year after Woodhouse had been de-selected by the Labour Party. She said the pair had fallen out before that, over a disagreement they had while they were both on the licensing committee.

She said that "from the beginning, I thought it was him".

Christine Banks said one of the expletive-ridden letters included reference to the death of her daughter

After about 25 cards came in quick succession she contacted the police. After that she did not open them, instead putting them in evidence bags for the police to collect.

Officers scoured them for forensic evidence that might reveal who the culprit was, and it was only this summer that a breakthrough came.

It is understood detectives found a fingerprint on one of the letters, and it came up as a match with ones they had for Woodhouse when he was arrested over earlier, unrelated offences.

Woodhouse, who represented the County ward in Liverpool from 2010 until he was de-selected from the party in 2022, was arrested in August.

After he pleaded guilty, magistrates were told he had four previous convictions, totalling 15 offences, committed between 1996 and 2006.

His solicitor Kevin Kelly said Woodhouse had been suffering from "a long-term mental health condition that may have impacted his decisions" during the period he was sending the letters to Banks.

Sentencing was adjourned until 9 December. The maximum sentence he could receive is 16 weeks in prison.