A journalist’s ex-partner jailed over a campaign of harassment previously attacked her at a daily newspaper’s office, she has revealed.

Irish News journalist Allison Morris has spoken out about the abuse she suffered at the hands Fernando Murphy before he was jailed last week.

Murphy, 42, was handed a 14-month sentence at Belfast Magistrates’ Court last Thursday, and will spend half his sentence in prison and the other half on licence.

He had previously been convicted in his absence of 10 offences including multiple charges of harassment, breaching a restraining order and sending menacing messages by a public electronic communications network.

Allison, pictured, has now called for stalking legislation to be extended to Northern Ireland to help other victims of similar abuse.

Describing her ordeal in a piece for the Belfast-based News, Allison wrote: “This man was violent, obsessive and controlling, I’d removed that control and he was reacting badly. He arrived outside my office, ranting and screaming, foaming at the mouth with rage, demanding I speak to him.

“I tried to calm him down, to reason with an unreasonable person. I explained I was waiting on my daughter ringing with important news and didn’t need this stress. He had a sandwich in his hand, cheese and pickle, and he squashed it into my hair and clothes as cars slowed down to watch.

“He ran off shouting that he was going to repeatedly ring my phone so my daughter couldn’t get through. He rang almost 90 times in the next few hours so my phone was constantly engaged.

“I went to the bathroom in work, tried to brush the pieces of food from my hair and rang the police. I thought that would finally be the beginning of the end. How wrong I was. All it did was enrage him more, and he got smarter about what kind of abuse he could and couldn’t get away with.

“It took from then until November 2017 to have him convicted of harassment for the first time. There were stages when I was reporting three or four incidents a week.”

Allison, the paper’s security correspondent, went on to call for cases such as hers to be “fast-tracked” in the justice system in order to help victims.

She added: “I often work in the courts and watch as domestic abusers are bailed and rebailed time and time again despite numerous breaches. Officers and the judiciary must be properly trained in new technology, now a big part of stalking cases.

“If I struggled at times to navigate this system, what must it be like for more vulnerable victims who don’t have that support network? I still feel stigmatised by being the victim of domestic crime and that should not be the case.

“On Thursday 6 February, a court ruled that my abuser must serve his 14-month sentence. He will spend seven of those behind bars. This was after appealing his second conviction, and he still refuses to accept any responsibility despite having been now found guilty by three separate judges.

“I’m far from convinced my ordeal is over, but I am hopeful that legislative change will soon make stalking a criminal offence, with tailored protection orders and sentences that reflect the seriousness of the crime.

“Until then, I despair for those victims living in fear of the what next, every moment of every day.”