Law student embarks on hate campaign against lecturer who bumped him in corridor

A law graduate who launched a terrifying campaign against his former lecturer simply because the academic had once bumped into him has been made subject to a ten-year restraining order.
Luke HarkerLuke Harker
Luke Harker

Luke Harker, of Seamer, North Yorkshire, sent abusive emails to Hull University’s Christian Twigg-Flesner after harbouring years of hatred over the accident in the corridor in 2012.

In one email, stocky Harker told the bespectacled academic: “I would love to throw you on your head and break your glasses.”

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Harker has now been handed a decade-long restraining order for the messages, while his solicitor Robert Vining said: “I’ve personally told the defendant this conviction means his chosen (legal) career has now effectively ended.”

Victim Dr Christian Twigg-FlesnerVictim Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner
Victim Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner

Scarborough magistrates heard that over a two-month period, 26-year-old Harker sent threatening messages to the academic, who was then taking the blood-thinning drug Warfarin.

They included one message calling his former lecturer a “greedy negroid Jew”, despite the victim being neither Jewish nor black.

“Initially I thought it was a hoax,” said Professor Twigg-Flesner in his victim statement. “I am on Warfarin and any blow to the head could be potentially fatal. The very least I would like is an explanation and an apology face-to-face.”

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Magistrates slapped a lengthy restraining order on Harker which prohibits him from contacting either the victim or visiting the university’s campus.

Victim Dr Christian Twigg-FlesnerVictim Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner
Victim Dr Christian Twigg-Flesner

Harker, of Abbots Garth, was spared prison after the probation service said he would be “too vulnerable” behind bars, having never been locked up before. The court was told he had previously been cautioned for harassing a female co-student in 2014.

He hung his head and fiddled nervously with a water bottle as the crown’s Katy Varlow recalled how the professor’s failure to move out of the defendant’s way in 2012 was the catalyst for his dangerous obsession.

“He felt aggrieved that it was done on purpose,” said the prosecutor. “He retained his ill feeling, and it built up before he let him know how he felt – this was completely unprovoked.”

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Harker then fired off a series of emails between last August and October.

Yet despite the court hearing how Harker would boast about his intellect and superior linguistic skills, he was caught after sending them from the email account he’d registered with the university. The court heard how Professor Twigg-Flesner, a commercial law lecturer, was “stunned” by the emails.

Magistrates sentenced Harker to 18 weeks in jail, after stating: “We are dealing with an offence so serious that only custody is appropriate.” They suspended the sentence for two years after the probation service argued prison would hinder his future employment options.

Harker will also have to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work and carry a 10-day rehabilitation programme and pay £165 in costs and charges.