A Dublin woman was harassed "persistently and consistently" by a Bulgarian man she met on holiday and later helped find work in Ireland, the Circuit Criminal Court has been told.
Mary Gilhooley, from Lucan, Co Dublin, in her mid-40s, told a jury that when she was on holiday with her husband and son in Tunisia last June he called every Tunisian hotel on a holiday brochure to find her and then rang her an average 20 times a day.
She denied not giving a frank account of her relationship with him but admitted that a letter produced in court by Seán Guerin, defending, had her name on it, was faxed to a Bulgarian number from her workplace, and called Vencislav Venev (39) the "love of my life".
She denied knowledge of the letter which was written in German and told Mr Guerin it could have been "invented". She was told for months that if she did not drop the charges, letters would be invented.
Mr Venev, from a Bulgarian village on the Black Sea coast, has denied harassing the woman on dates between May 1st, 2004 and July 14th, 2004.
She told Lisa Dempsey, prosecuting, that during that time he phoned her so often she began to fear for her life and that of her family.
Ms Gilhooley said she met Mr Venev at the restaurant he was working in when she and her family were on holiday in Bulgaria in July 1999. They became friendly with him and his mother and discussed the possibility of him working in Ireland.
Later Mr Venev faxed his CV to her husband's work and she found him a hotel job. She also helped arrange a work permit through the hotel where he was to live. He arrived in Ireland in August 2000 and stayed at her home. It was to be a temporary arrangement, she said, but he stayed for "at least six months". The arrangement soured when Mr Venev began to come home drunk and insulted Ms Gilhooley and her family. She said she then arranged for him to stay at a neighbour's but the neighbour later rang her and told her to take him back because he was drunk and disrupting other residents.
When he was fired from his hotel job, Ms Gilhooley helped him to get a job as a kitchen porter at her workplace. But she left this post when he began ringing her and approaching her on corridors at work.
Throughout May-July 2004 he sent her text messages, rang her mobile, her home phone and also her workplace.
She admitted in cross-examination by Mr Guerin that she had been to Bulgaria on her own in January 2000 to attend the wedding of Venev's brother but denied having communicated with him regularly between the time she first met him in Bulgaria and he came to work in Dublin. She said the only mode of communication between them had been her sending him letters written in Bulgarian through a Bulgarian colleague at her workplace.
When Mr Guerin produced a letter, which he said had been faxed to Mr Venev from her work number, she agreed it was signed in her name and carried flight details from Dublin to Sofia on dates which could have coincided with her trip there for the wedding.
When she said she could not read the letter, which was in German, Mr Guerin read her a translation. It addressed Mr Venev as "my darling" and the author described him as the "love of my life". It also expressed sadness at the lack of a letter from him or his mother, despite two letters that the author had sent to him. "Nobody loves me", it read. "I can't wait for Wednesday", it said, further, giving flight details and time of arrival at Sofia airport.
"It looks like a photocopy to me," she said. She could not tell whether it was "on old-fashioned fax paper" and told the jury of five women and seven women that she did not often use fax machines herself. She also alleged that the letter could have been "invented" .
Ms Gilhooley said she had not wanted to go on trial and knew that if she did so her life "would be wrecked and pulled apart."
Mr Guerin asked how that could happen simply by bringing the matter to court. She replied: "I'm a married woman."
The hearing continues before Judge Kevin Haugh.