A STALKER threatened to put her ex-husband’s entire workforce on the dole as she continued to pursue a years-long vendetta against him.

Judith Holmes-O’Brien repeatedly defied a court order made in 2002 keeping her away from Barry O’Brien, his home and his family’s firm York Motor Factors.

She told York Crown Court: “Let no man put asunder my marriage,” and started her evidence by reading aloud at random from the Bible. But now she could be jailed after the couple’s teenage daughter insisted on giving evidence against her, and after York Motor Factors staff described how she called them paedophiles and illegal workers, claimed she owned the business and threatened to close it down.

Sales employee Jason Michael Addinall said: “I found it distressing. It is not something you want to be called.”

Company director Mr O’Brien told the jury at York Crown Court how his ex-wife subjected him to a “tirade of abuse” at his home within an hour of visiting his firm.

“It was just ranting and raving. It was almost a mantra of the same accusations repeated over and over again,” he said.

“There is a long history in your case,” the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, told Holmes-O’Brien as he adjourned her case for a pre-sentence report. “I want to pass a sentence that makes it clear there will be consequences for breaching court orders.”

Holmes-O’Brien, a belly-dancing teacher, who questioned her daughter in person, claimed in court that police had persuaded the teenager to tell lies about her. But Evangeline insisted she was telling the truth. Holmes-O’Brien, 44, of Naburn Lane, Fulford, who claims she is not divorced, denied two charges of breaking a restraining order, but was convicted after a three-day trial. She was released on bail.

The jury heard that Selby magistrates made the initial order under an anti-stalking law banning her from going near her ex-husband, his firm or home and that York magistrates and York Crown Court had upheld it since. She has previous convictions for harassment and breaking it and has been arrested 11 times.

Asked if she knew about the ban, she replied: “In my heart, I didn’t know. I was told, but in my heart, I didn’t know.”

She claimed she had a defence on the grounds that the order was “corrupt” and that she was fighting “child abuse and fraud” in going to the firm and Mr O’Brien’s home.

She disputed prosecution accounts of what she had said and alleged the courts, police, security services and others were conspiring against her After the verdict she said: “I will be leaving this country once I have got my millions and it will be this country’s loss, but I won’t be leaving my belly-dancing ladies in the lurch. I want my job back.”

She alleged her criminal convictions made it difficult for her to work.