A stalker who terrorised a nurse to the extent she had to be given a rape-alarm has been jailed and placed on the Sex Offenders Register.
Mark Cooney, 60, shouted he would be “instantly appealing” his sentencing as he was led from the dock to a waiting prison van to begin his ten-month prison sentence.
He stalked three women over a three-year period, calling their workplaces.
Dundee Sheriff Court heard how he would target total strangers, asking them what they were wearing and if they liked to be “wined and dined”.
Cooney found out which ward the nurse worked on and managed to get hold of an elderly relative’s phone number during his sinister campaign.
He claimed during a trial the calls had been made by someone else using his mobile phone and landline.
Cooney claimed he could not reveal the phone users’ identities because they were drug dealers.
Sheriff Paul Brown blasted Cooney’s attitude, telling his defence solicitor Douglas Thomson his client did “still not accept the conduct of which he has been convicted”.
He added: “You were convicted after trial.
“You targeted your victims and inflicted harm on them.
“You have shown no remorse, in my view.”
Cooney, from Carnoustie, was placed on the Sex Offenders Register for a decade.
Nurse’s evidence
Cooney’s nurse victim told his trial: “He asked me if I liked to be wined and dined and if I wanted to go on a date.
“He was saying we had a mutual friend and making out I knew who he was.
“He asked me if he bought me a dress, would I wear it and what colour would I like.
“I really believed it was someone that I knew or maybe my friends had set me up.
“I spoke to my friend and she said she never gave my number out.
“I started to feel a bit sick because he mentioned details about my gran’s house.”
He asked sexually explicit questions.
He continued to call the ward and the woman eventually had to get a personal alarm and be escorted to her car after her shift.
She said: “I was given a rape alarm, which made me feel they thought there was some kind of threat.
“People were walking me to my car and I hate that somebody has managed to make me feel like that.”
Two other women told how they received similar inappropriate calls from Cooney at the accountancy firm where they worked in Dundee.
The charges
Cooney, of Anderson Court, Carnoustie, was convicted of causing the first woman fear and alarm between January 1 and December 31, 2015 and the second between March 1 and June 4, 2015.
Between September 20, 2017 and February 11, 2018, Cooney repeatedly phoned the third woman at Ninewells Hospital and an address occupied by her, trying to engage her in conversation, asking personal questions and making remarks of an inappropriate and sexual nature.
Mr Thomson added: “There is at least a partial acceptance of his behaviour.
“There is a risk he will lose his job as a result of this conviction.”
