A TERRIFIED schoolgirl told today how her walk to school turned into a nightmare after a stalker began tracing her every step.

Thirteen-year-old Megan Whittaker said the young man followed her on foot for several days running as she went to and from Burnholme Community College.

At one stage, she repeatedly crossed the road to shake him off, but he simply crossed the road as well.

She also tried going through an alleyway to avoid him, but then noticed he had gone down it as well, and she ended up running to her grandmother's home.

"When I got there, I was shaking and crying," she said. "I was really scared."

Her stepfather, Damian, said: "I am really enraged about this. It's absolutely horrible and totally disgusting. It's every parent's nightmare, isn't it?

"She is just trying to go to school and somebody invades her privacy and frightens her out of her wits.

"It has shaken her up - it has shaken the whole family up. It has done all our heads in. It's out of order.

"She is a very sensible girl who is capable of going to school on her own, but we are now taking her there each day."

He revealed it was the second frightening experience that Megan had suffered while walking to school, having been grabbed by a stranger while walking along a cycling track when she was 11.

Damian said the stalker was about 5ft, 7ins to 5ft 8ins tall, and in his late teens or early 20s, with mousey brown hair, light at the front, and dark eyebrows and "shadowy eyes."

He was wearing cream and black puffa jackets, black tracksuit bottoms and trainers.

Damian said police had grabbed a man on Monday afternoon, but he did not know what had happened next.

However, his wife and daughter had seen the man again yesterday, staring but not following Megan on this occasion.

Police spokesman Colin Ventress said a complaint had been made that a 13-year-old girl had been followed on her way to and from school, and officers were investigating.

Megan said she first noticed the stalker staring at her on Tuesday morning last week. "He was at the end of Burlington Avenue with Melrosegate," she said.

"I just walked past and thought it wasn't anything. But when I came back from school, he was hanging around the same place and started following me. I still didn't think much of it, thinking he might just have been walking that way."

But she said he followed her again the next morning and afternoon, and again on Thursday.

On Monday, he followed her again, at which point she began crossing the road again and again, and went through the alleyway to avoid him.

She said that after getting to her grandmother's house in Third Avenue, her brother had arrived and said that the man was hiding behind a van waiting for her to come out.