Woman said neighbour had ‘tampon string hair’ in 15 year terror campaign

A grumpy woman compared a mother of two’s hair to ‘tampon string,’ labelled her partner as ‘penis-envy’ and threw toilet rolls at them during a terror campaign spanning more than a decade.

Retired banker Bernadette Gibb, 68, is said to have hurled ‘every four letter word imaginable’ at next-door neighbours Lillian Marflitt and Tony Fidoe.

During her hate campaign, Gibb would open the bathroom window of her seaside bungalow whenever she saw the couple outside and shout: ‘F*** off!’ before slamming it shut.

She also shouted phrases like ‘one cheap jive’ and told Ms Marflitt she should teach her children how to use condoms.

She also accused Mr Fidoe of ‘using the womb’ of Ms Marflitt and called him ‘Penis-envy’ after Sigmund Freud’s theory of female psychosexual development, in which young girls experience anxiety upon realization that they do not have a penis.

Gibb, who lives in Formby, near Merseyside, was initially issued with a restraining order in 2018 but it was extended in 2022 after she repeatedly ignored it.

This week she appeared before magistrates in Sefton after a series of other breaches and was sentenced to 38 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months.

After the case Mr Fidoe said: ‘We have been called every single four-letter word you can think of by this lady, just trying to provoke a reaction from us. She once shouted ‘Penis-envy’. I thought ‘What does that mean?’ and I had to Google it. It was just so random.’

Mr Fidoe said the hate campaign started in 2009 after Gibb moved into her property.

‘The first day she moved in she introduced herself, and a little bit later in the day she came over and was in tears. She said where she had moved from she had awful neighbours.

‘My first words were “You are fine here. Everyone is great in this neighbourhood.” Then she just started terrorising us. We had to document everything and submit it all to the police.

‘She was always very devious. She would wait till nobody was around, open the window, tell us to ‘F*** off’, and then shut the window again. She would also stand in the back garden, and shout abuse over the fence when no one was around. She just suddenly turned on us one day. I had been playing football in Liverpool when I returned home to the car.

‘She flew out of her door, pulled open the car door and said I had been climbing over the garden and threatening me and the family. She would go on all day drinking benders and that is when the abuse would start.’

Fed up, Mr Fidoe went to visit Gibb’s previous address and ask the neighbours if they experienced issues as well – and discovered she had caused ‘absolute terror’ there as well.

Mr Fidoe said he sent 138 pages of incidents to the police covering the period from 2009 to 2018.

‘They advised us to install CCTV but she was very crafty,’ he added. ‘The window at the side would open and she would shout ‘F*** off’, and no one would see. Another time, she opened the window and lobbed a toilet roll.’

We have never reacted or tried to provoke this lady, never. We have always tried to be friendly but the abuse prior was terrible – unbelievable really. We always got the sense that she does not like men,’ he said. ‘If she knew that her behaviour could impact your life, she would get a buzz from that.’

Earlier Paula Grogan, prosecuting, told the court: ‘She then shouted that Ms Marflitt has a terminal diagnosis and it was suggested to the lady she teaches her children how to place a condom on.

‘She referred to Ms Marflitt’s hair as looking like a tampon saying that Mr Fidoe has been using Ms Marflitt’s womb and that they should all move. They felt that she was showing signs of intoxication as she was very red in the face.’

The defendant accepts she may have been shouting out and swearing on occasions but it was not directed towards her neighbours.

Gibb claimed she had been receiving unwanted phone calls who were ‘harassing her’, and she had been yelling at him.

Gibb admitted four charges of breaching a restraining order. Her lawyer Darren Jones said: ‘The defendant lost her daughter in 2021. She was her carer for her whole life and it had a massive impact on her, hence the excessive drinking. All of these incidents are alcohol-related.’

Mr Jones added: ‘Miss Gibb is an intelligent woman who worked for banks in Jersey and across Europe. his all stems from the death of her daughter unfortunately and looking for answers at the bottom of the bottle as we all know are never there.’

Gibb was also ordered to complete 15 days of rehabilitation activity and a six-month alcohol treatment requirement and was also made to pay £487 in costs. She was issued with a further five-year restraining order.

District Judge James Hatton told her: ‘There is an ongoing history between you and this family for some reason I do not know. This has to stop. If it does not stop you are going to find yourself going into custody.’

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