Woman felt 'totally violated' after discovering creepy thing neighbour did to her home
A woman said she felt 'totally violated' after she discovered her neighbour had set up cameras in her house.
Debbie Wearing had trusted neighbour William Nolan and his wife with a key to her Erdington home back in 2020 so they could feed her cats while she was away.
However, while she was having dinner with her partner on 7 November of that year they discovered a black plastic box had been taped under the table.
Debbie initially thought it could be one of her grandson's toys, but a quick bit of research revealed it was actually a voice recorder spying on her.
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They searched the house for other listening devices and found another one stuck behind the headboard of the bed, and the following day she told West Midlands Police but needed more evidence as there was no sign of forced entry to her home.
Buying some spy cameras of her own, Debbie set them up inside her house and told Nolan's wife she was going to be out for a while.
About half an hour after she left her cameras caught Nolan, her neighbour of around 30 years, coming into her home and frantically searching for his devices.
She had said: "Questions run through your mind constantly but my biggest one was 'why me?'.
"To this day, I still don't know why he did it.
"For me, for somebody to put a recording device on your headboard, there's only one reason why they want to do that and that's a sexual reason - something only a perv would do.
"You can't trust strangers and my story goes to show sometimes you can't trust the people around you."
The grandma said she only felt like she got closure after moving away, while Nolan pleaded guilty to stalking in 2021 and was sentenced.
He died in 2024 at the age of 61.
Speaking to The Sun, Debbie said she used to feel 'safe' with Nolan coming round after her husband died in 2019, but that discovering the stalking had left her feeling 'totally violated'.
"When I found the spyware I felt totally violated. Bill’s trade was CCTV and security and things like that so that was also worrying," she said.
"I felt uncomfortable putting my underwear out in the garden, just the thought of him watching. I had to move house, I didn’t feel comfortable in my own home anymore.
"I think he should have served longer in jail, he only served eight weeks. But what he did was awful, it was so intrusive."
She'd thought her neighbour was 'a lovely, polite man, if a little shy' and felt like she could trust him with a spare key, but she also remembered a few months before she'd caught onto his devices that he'd moved his CCTV camera without asking so it could see into her garden.
Anyone affected by the story contact the National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0300.
Joe Harker