Nicola McLean reveals terror after she’s burgled by stalkers on social media who watched her at home
NICOLA McLean was burgled by stalkers watching her on social media and waiting for her to be alone.
The model, 35, was left terrified last summer after she was targeted by thieves when home alone caring for her sons, Rocky, 11, and Striker, seven, while husband Tom Williams, 37, was working in America.
Speaking exclusively to The Sun Online, Nicola said: “Last summer holidays I was burgled when I was at home alone with the kids and Tom was in Arizona.
“They stole my car, and where my car was parked in relation to my house, you would only know it was mine if you’d been watching me.
“On my social media at the time it was apparent that I was home and Tom was away, and the police and myself feel that whoever burgled me had been watching my tweets and waiting for that opportunity.”
The experience has now made Nicola change what information she shares about her life in the hope that she won’t attract anymore crazed criminals.
“It’s completely changed the way I behave on social media,” she explained.
“If I’m ever alone for a prolonged period of time because Tom’s away, we both make sure there is no clue anywhere.”
And the model, who has always been open about her battle with anxiety, says she now feels nervous in her own home.
She continued: “It makes me very nervous when I’m in the house sometimes but it hasn’t affected my anxiety attacks.
“I think I more just have an underlying anxiety now because of it, it’s like my mind and body’s way of dealing with things, rather than have a full blown attack over it all, I just constantly feel anxious.”
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Nicola has been plagued with internet stalker horror stories for years, and last week appeared on Celeb Trolls: We’re Coming To Get You to come face-to-face with Toneeta Beckford, the woman who has been sending her horrific online abuse since 2014.
She told The Sun Online: “Nicola, 35, said: “Toneeta Beckford started tweeting me when my husband and I briefly split three years ago and she’s continued to do so since.
“She started when I was at my weakest and she’s just been relentless, I’d literally be on the floor crying and then see she’d been calling me every name under the sun, I’m in a much better place now, but when it began they were catastrophic and detrimental.
“The tweets were so graphic, she called me a prostitute and a c***.
“She used to say if she ever saw me she would punch me in the face.
“She made a lot of sexual comments towards me. It was disgusting.”
And if the torrent of abuse wasn’t shocking enough, Toneeta, 30, had appeared in court in 2010 after bombarding Crimewatch presenter Rav Wilding with extremist rants in which she threatened to see him “go to Hell.”
One message warned him: Don’t f**k with me Rav... I will see you right on Judgment Day.'
Another said: “Who the f**k do you think you are? It's not your world, it's Allah's... you will see me go to Paradise and I will see you go to Hell.”
The vile messages led Rav to tell magistrates that he worried he would be killed like Jill Dando who was shot on her doorstep in April 1999.
He said: “Obviously in the nature of my work on Crimewatch and my predecessor being murdered in her job, I have to take security very, very seriously.
“I had to be careful using public transport and the BBC had to increase security for me.”
And the case seven years ago has made Nicola find the trolling all the more alarming.
She said: “Rav Wilding had to take her to court for stalking and harassing him, and she was reprimanded.
“That was so alarming and scary for me as a mum of two young children, that this woman can be taken to court it be in the press, and she doesn’t see it as a problem to threaten people.
“She was told in the court of law that the behaviour was not acceptable but she still did it.”
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