The innocent man ended up in prison twice and arrested at gunpoint

Kirsty Barr (Image: Facebook)

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/you-were-real-monster-here-7734840

A twisted Barton mum who managed to convince police that her ex-partner was a monster who attacked her and put a gun to head was proved the ‘real monster’ in the astonishing case after putting him through four years of hell.

Kirsty Barr’s lies – including that he threw her down stairs, attacked her and held a gun to her head – landed the 26-year-old father of her baby daughter in prison twice and he was arrested by armed police at gunpoint. But it eventually unravelled – not before the man lost almost everything and was driven to wanting to take his own life – and she was branded by a judge as ‘the real monster here’.

Before she was jailed for three years and nine months, after admitting perverting the course of justice between June 4 and December 12, 2018, Hull Crown Court heard in the victim’s own words how she had ‘set out to destroy his life’.

Read more: Evil ex convinced police former partner threw her downstairs and held gun to her head – but it was all lies

He was left so desperate that he wanted the police to shoot him dead so that his torture and misery would end – and he was forced to flee to Southampton so that he could prove that he was not in Hull, where they had both lived at the time, and could not be accused of terrorising Barr.

Reading out a victim statement to the court. He said: “Kirsty Barr set out to destroy my life.”

Kirsty Barr, 24, from Barton was jailed for three years and nine months for perverting the course of justice

 

She had “portrayed me as a monster” during interviews for stories in newspapers and he was arrested 10 times in one month, sometimes in front of family, including his mother, and in the street, in pubs and clubs and in front of friends as well as strangers.

“I lost my health,” he said. “I could not eat or sleep. I worried what would come next and still have flashbacks.”

This included when he heard sirens or the sound of a helicopter nearby because he worried that the police were coming to arrest him. The police had brought in a helicopter when armed police were sent to his home in the early hours after false allegations by Barr that he had a knife and a gun with him during a supposed violent confrontation with her.

Random selfies

The picture that Barr, 24, formerly of Hull but recently of St Chad’s Way, Barton upon Humber, painted of him gave him no voice, he said. He started to take random selfies of himself “everywhere” so that he could prove where he was in case she made accusations against him.

“I was in prison for offences that I had not committed,” he told the court. “This took a terrible toll on my mental health.” He wanted the ordeal to stop. “I wanted to kill myself,” he said.

The only thing standing before him to stop him doing this was his “beautiful daughter”. While he was wrongly in prison, he missed her birthday for the only time. It was the “lowest point of my life,” he said. “I didn’t think I would survive.”

He said that he was left “terrified” at about 2am when a helicopter flew overhead at his home and armed police arrived. He had to put his hands behind his head.

“I spent three days on remand on suicide watch,” he said. He was released on a tag and hoped that Barr’s lies would be uncovered. He went to Southampton to escape the risk of more lies about his behaviour and the “monster” that he was being painted as.

The man lost his job and had to stop teaching children as a football coach, a role that he loved. He now had his family back and a new job that he loved.

 

The harm that Barr caused to him lasted for more than four years and almost all of his daughter’s life. He had lived on handouts from family and friends. He was living with his grandmother and had a new girlfriend.

He said that he was angry that a police force that was supposedly “there to serve and protect the victim had failed the victim” but the police had “rectified that” in the end.

The man’s mother said in a statement that Barr had constantly sent the police to her house in the middle of the night to lock up her son, banging on the door to arrest him wrongly. This had brought “night terrors” to her 11-year-old son, who was “badly traumatised” and suffered problems at school.

“I watched from first hand my family falling apart,” she said. Her world was “crumbling again” when the victim of the lies was placed on remand after wrongly being accused of breaching his restraining order. “My son was in prison wrongfully,” she said. “I cried at work.”

The thought of her son being in prison when he was innocent caused “irreparable harm” to her after it happened. “At present, I can’t get over what happened,” she said. Her son had been “painted to be a monster” and the next three years had been “hell” in trying to deal with the case.

“After four years of hell, we are now settled in our home and trying to rebuild our lives,” she said. The mother said of Barr: “She has finally admitted she lied. She set out to ruin us and succeeded in doing that for four years. The lasting damage done will be carried for the rest of our lives.”

‘Worse was to come’

Judge Mark Bury said: “It’s always a serious offence but this one is a particularly serious example of its kind. He lost his job, he lost contact with his daughter, his mental health began to deteriorate.

“Worse was to come. He got home, having been in the company of other people all night. He was in the process of running a bath when armed police came to his door. It was two in the morning. He was arrested at gunpoint. His mother and 11-year-old brother witnessed this.

“Such was his mental fragility that he invited the armed police to shoot him. He was, had he played his cards badly down, at risk of being seriously injured or killed.”

Judge Bury said that Barr had portrayed her ex-boyfriend as a monster in newspaper articles. “It wasn’t until January 2019 that the police began to work out that the real monster here was you,” said Judge Bury. “This is a desperately serious offence of its type.”

The ex-boyfriend could have been charged with aggravated burglary or possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, both of which carried a possible sentence of life imprisonment.

“Your conduct here was very persistent,” said Judge Bury. “The amount of police time that has been taken up and public resources is significant. The firearm deployment cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and that’s just a part of it.

 

“There are huge consequences of severity here. He nearly lost everything. He lost his employment, he lost his child, he lost his liberty and he wasn’t far off taking his own life. Thankfully, after a long time, he has begun to put his life on track.

“He has got a job now. He is now in another relationship. His life eventually is getting back on track but it’s not just him. His mother has been traumatised by all this.

“The idea that a son of hers is jailed for something that he was totally innocent of must be a nightmare for a mother. She has had to move house. His brother has suffered serious psychological harm.”

Richard Woolfall, prosecuting, said that Barr and the man were in a relationship between February 2015 and December 2017. But he was fined £200 and a restraining order was made against him on June 5, 2018 after he admitted assaulting her on February 13 of that year.

They had a daughter but, in February 2018, Barr left the baby girl on the doorstep of her ex-boyfriend’s mother’s home at 2.30am. She drove off but sent a text message saying that the girl, then aged about 18 months old, was there.

“Because of that, the family reported the defendant to social services and it’s from then that the falling out began,” said Mr Woolfall.

The ex-boyfriend’s mother received angry text messages from Barr demanding that she telephone social services and tell them that she had got it wrong about dropping off the girl on the doorstep.

“She threatened in those text messages that she would promise that, if she did not withdraw that allegation with social services, she would ruin them both – mother and son.”

Barr telephoned her ex-boyfriend but he ignored it. She told him in another call to come round now or she would telephone the police. He ignored the request but she telephoned again and repeated the threat. “She then made a call to him on Facetime but again he refused to answer it,” said Mr Woolfall.

 

The ex-boyfriend telephoned the police to say that he was worried by repeated calls to him and feared that she would claim that he was in breach of his restraining order only two days after it had been made.

Barr made a false statement on June 6, 2018 claiming that she had received text messages from him and that he had thrown stones at her window and tried to get into her home by a back door. She doctored screenshots of supposed text messages saying that he had called her a “sl*g”. He was arrested at midnight for supposedly breaching the order.

The ex-boyfriend was remanded in custody to the police cells overnight before being brought before Hull Magistrates’ Court where the then District Judge, Frederick Rutherford, remanded him in custody for 56 days at Hull Prison.

At a trial before the now retired Mr Rutherford, the ex-boyfriend was convicted of breaching the restraining order but he was not kept in custody any longer. Barr had “perjured herself” during the trial.

“Contact with his daughter became extremely difficult because of the allegations because he was being painted as a perpetrator of domestic violence,” said Mr Woolfall.

Barr contacted the man’s grandmother pretending to be from the police and wanting to update records with his telephone number. “He started receiving calls from a private number,” said Mr Woolfall. “Then he was getting telephone calls without any caller ID. He was contacted on Facebook via a false profile.

“He went to Southampton for five weeks to protect himself from further false accusations,” said Mr Woolfall. When the ex-boyfriend returned to Hull, he took selfie photographs of himself and posted them on social media so that he could prove where he actually was but there were further serious problems on December 1, 2018 when Barr told police that he had swung a knife at her, thrown her down some stairs and cut her on her arm.

She claimed that he had pulled a handgun out of his trousers and pushed it into her forehead and forced her onto the carpet, causing a friction burn.

“He was running himself a bath when he heard a helicopter,” said Mr Woolfall. “It was the police helicopter and he was ultimately arrested by a team of armed police who attended at the house at 2am.”

‘He could easily have been killed’

The armed police had guns trained on him when he came out of the house. “He was told to drop to his knees so the police could get closer to him,” said Mr Woolfall. “He was exposed to the risk of lethal force had he not followed their instructions or had a panic attack.” If a police officer had pulled the trigger, the ex-boyfriend could easily have been killed.

“It was a report of domestic violence that the police have to take with the utmost seriousness,” said Mr Woolfall. “He was so low at that point that he was telling the police to shoot him because he just could not see any end to it.”

The man’s 11-year-old brother was badly upset. The ex-boyfriend was again remanded in custody and he was charged with having a knife. He was released with a tag after three days but had been “contemplating taking his own life to end it all and make it stop”.

He went back to Southampton and stayed there until the case was discontinued after the police were able to check his version of events and prove that he had an alibi. Bruise injuries on Barr were said to be probably self-inflicted. She claimed that her daughter had been upset by the supposed incident and gave a 12-page false statement.

An appeal against the original conviction by District Judge Rutherford was successful at Hull Crown Court in January 2020 and it was not opposed by the prosecution.

Barr’s allegations had been reported in the Hull Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror and The Sun and the ex-boyfriend had been “portrayed as a monster”, said Mr Woolfall. The man had lost his job and had been stopped from being a football coach because of Barr’s false allegations.