The victim of a serial stalker has been awarded compensation after a High Court judge ruled that the Crown Prosecution Service had failed to protect her.
Claire Waxman will receive £3,500 in damages after the CPS dropped a charge against Elliot Fogel, who has been repeatedly jailed for harassing her and her family.
The ruling followed 37-year-old Fogel's unsuccessful attempt to launch a civil case against Ms Waxman last year, in which he claimed she had conducted a "hate campaign" against him.
Fogel, a former freelance television producer, has stalked Ms Waxman since 2003 and a lifetime restraining order has been imposed on him.
After launching his civil action, Fogel was subsequently charged with breaching the order because he gathered information about Ms Waxman to build his case. But the CPS later dropped the charge because it said his human rights would be breached if he were denied the opportunity to take civil action.
At a hearing last November, Ms Waxman's lawyers told the High Court that the failure to prosecute Fogel had presented him and other stalkers with a precedent to use civil proceedings to harass their victims.
Lord Justice Moore-Bick's reserved judgment was published last week. He said the effect of Fogel's actions was "rather less severe" than in other stalking cases, but that the length of his campaign should be taken into consideration.
Awarding her compensation, he concluded: "Ms Waxman has the right to live her life free of the persistent nuisance and annoyance caused by the activities of Mr Fogel. In my view she was a vulnerable person, whose psychological integrity the state had an obligation to protect from further action on his part.
"In the light of the history of the matter and the serious effects of Mr Fogel's behaviour towards Ms Waxman, the state owed her a duty to take proper measures to protect her and was in breach of its duty in failing to pursue the prosecution."
Fogel was jailed last month for two years for a separate breach of the lifetime restraining order.
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