A stalker tricked a young Gourock woman into becoming his girlfriend

Thomas Gilks, 34, targeted the 18-year-old online with constant demands for attention and threats to kill himself during a five-month campaign.

He insisted that she kept her iPhone permanently on Facetime calls with him as she slept at night, so that he would be the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning.

Gilks also ordered the teenager to walk around with her phone on call to him so that he could listen in to the conversations she had with her mum and friends.

The victim told Greenock Sheriff Court: "He would ask me what I was doing every minute of the day.

"It was draining, it was obsessive and I didn't like it."

She had set up an anti-bullying page on Facebook, inspired by personal experience at school, and met Gilks online via a mutual friend last October.

A jury heard how Gilks wormed his way into her affections by pretending that he'd been an Army sergeant who specialised in de-activating roadside bombs in Afghanistan.

He convinced her that he was suffering badly from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his 'service' in the war-ravaged country.

Giving evidence from behind screens, the woman said: "I just wanted to be there for him because I knew he was going through a hard time.

"He was giving me compliments a lot and I started to really like him. He said he liked me too and did want to be with me."

But Gilks behaviour towards the teenager rapidly darkened as he took a dislike to her going out with friends, particularly a 20-year-old ex-boyfriend.

His behaviour escalated when he began to drive up to Inverclyde from his home in Stratford and sleep in his green Volkswagen Golf at Lyle Hill and Lunderston Bay.

The woman said: "I felt like I could never get away from him. I told him to leave me alone."

Asked by prosecutor Emma Jeffrey if Gilks did leave her alone, the victim replied: "No, it got worse."

She said: "I would plug my earphones in and talk to my mum and friends in person so he could listen in on all of my conversations.

"He begged me to keep Facetime on all the time and he'd wake up half-an-hour before my alarm would go off, and he'd be there when I woke up.

"I'd be getting constant phone calls and he'd be crying sometimes with a knife beside him, threatening to cut himself."

The court heard how Gilks turned up out of the blue at the Greenock campus of West College Scotland, where the woman studies, despite her never telling him that she did. He found that out through the mutual friend.

He also began loitering outside his victim's home in Gourock and followed her during her driving lessons, and even her driving test.

The woman said: "When I was at college he'd drive about and just wait for me.

"I'd go down to the fourth floor and look out of the window to see if he was at the front or the back, then take different routes home to avoid him.

"If I wasn't out of the college by 4pm he'd be ringing me."

Despite Gilks' behaviour — which included him telling her that he was moving to Port Glasgow to be closer to her — she said 'yes' to a proposal of marriage from him.

The woman explained: "He took me up to Lyle Hill and went down on one knee.

"I was embarrassed because people were about, walking dogs or driving past, and I thought if I said yes he'd just get up and we could just leave."

She told the court that she 'burst into tears' alone in her bedroom afterwards, adding: "I thought my life was over."

Regarding the suicide threats, she said: "I didn't want someone's life on my conscience."

The woman added: "I wish I'd never met him.

"I've been put on medication, my curtains are always shut and my mum can't do night shifts anymore.

"I've had to go to Women's Aid counselling sessions.

"I'm paranoid about everything. Every car that came up my street I thought it was him."

The woman's story was corroborated by her ex-boyfriend who said she had gone from 'bubbly and outgoing' before she met Gilks to 'unhappy'.

The young man said: "You could see she was getting overwhelmed.

"I cared about her a lot, and still do.

"It will take a while for her to get back to where she was when I first met her, but she's getting there."

Fiscal depute Ms Jeffrey summed up Gilks — who chose not to testify — as an 'obsessive, a fantasist and a stalker'.

A jury of nine men and six women took a little more than an hour to find him guilty of engaging in a course of conduct that caused his victim fear and alarm between October 12 last year and February 7.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton deferred sentence until August 15 for a background report and further remanded Gilks in custody.