Jailed Gloucestershire stalker Raymond Knight fails to get restraining order lifted

A besotted pensioner whose constant harassment of a woman GP led to the Government strengthening the stalking laws has failed in a bid to have a restraining order against him lifted.

In 2015, Gloucester's Raymond Knight, now 74, was jailed for five years for making the life of Dr Eleanor Aston, his former GP, a misery.

At the time of his sentencing to the maximum possible term for his offences the judge said five years was not long enough and Parliament should review the law.

Subsequently the MPs for Gloucester and Cheltenham, Richard Graham and Alex Chalk, successfully campaigned for the maximum to be increased to 10 years.

As well as the jail term, Knight was made subject to a restraining order banning him from going into 11 counties in Southern England and Wales where the doctor and her wider family lived or had connections.

On Friday at Gloucester Crown Court an application was made on Knight's behalf for that restraining order to be lifted - but it was dismissed and Judge Timothy Rose said it must remain in place indefinitely.

It was Judge Jamie Tabor QC, then the resident judge of Gloucester Crown Court, who made the order in 2015.

It prohibits Knight from going to the doctor's family home county of Essex as well as to Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, South Gloucestershire, Bristol, Wiltshire and Somerset.

Judge Tabor warned Knight at the time that if he breached the order he would be banned totally from the southern half of the UK.

"If he breaches this order I shall make a new order that does not allow him into the southern half of England and he will have to go to Bradford or somewhere like that - which may be a deterrent," the judge said then.

Prior to 2015, Knight had spent seven years stalking Dr Aston, a mum of two who worked at the the Hadwen GP practice in Abbeydale, Gloucester.

In May 2013 Knight, was jailed for three years eight months for his harassment of the GP - but soon after being paroled at the half way stage of his sentence he sent threatening messages to her home and her surgery before being jailed again in 2015.