Moment British stalker tells American travel influencer he wants to go '50 Shades of Grey' on her is shown in court
Rob Keating, 39, was seen in creepy videos he recorded and sent to Instagram star Alexandra Saper in Bali, detailing graphic sexual fantasies and threatening to kidnap her.
In one alarming clip, the obsessed loner declared: 'Either you're going to be relationshipped, or kidnapped,' before suggesting she take out 'kidnap insurance' and ominously stating: 'I have a suitcase for you to fit in.'
Keating, from West Sussex, was found guilty of threatening to kidnap Ms Saper and two counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress, following a six-day trial at Portsmouth Crown Court. last week.
Jurors took just two hours to convict the stalker, who had flown to Indonesia with rope in his luggage after bombarding the influencer with 'incessant and constant' messages.
In the bizarre videos, now released for the first time, Keating can be heard telling Ms Saper he wants to 'punish' her and 'breathe on' her, adding: 'You're going to need a bouncier bed.'
The 33-year-old influencer, who runs the popular travel account The Wayfarer with more than 100,000 followers, told the court she fled the island in fear for her life, saying she felt 'hunted like prey.'
Keating's obsession began in July 2022, when he contacted Ms Saper on Instagram with what she described as a 'weird and creepy' message.
She replied: 'Dude, why are you following me if you don't like my content?'
After she blocked him for sharing explicit extracts from the erotic novel 50 Shades of Grey, Keating escalated his behaviour – emailing her dozens of times and creating new profiles to monitor her posts, convinced she was sending him 'secret messages.'
In court, prosecutors said Keating had moved 'from follower to stalker', indulging in 'wilful self delusion' and imagining a relationship that never existed.
In one clip from August 2022, Keating said he wanted to 'punish' Ms Saper and described sexually aggressive fantasies.
A month later, he said: 'I want to go 50 Shades of Grey on you,' claiming he had leftover flights from lockdown that he could use to visit her.
In another disturbing video, he told her: 'You're going to have to reply to me eventually – there's talk about coming to Bali to get you.'
By December, Keating warned: 'Get insurance… either you're going to be relationshipped, or kidnapped.' He then added: 'You're going to have to prepare yourself for silly jokes and fun… a bouncier bed. That's a bit crude, I don't like that terminology. If that happens, that's going to be fucking fun.'
The court heard that Keating had booked a one-way ticket to Bali in February 2023, posting a photo from the plane with the chilling caption: 'Let the games begin.'
While in Bali, he visited bars and restaurants just metres from Ms Saper's home. She fled to neighbouring Laos in terror.
Giving evidence, the former lawyer described the devastating impact of the stalking, saying: 'I didn't think he would actually make the trip to the tropical island.'
'I blocked him on everything and never responded, so that was a pretty clear indication of not wanting contact,' she told the court.
'I was aware that he was talking about coming to Bali, but I didn't think it would actually happen.'
'I shared because I wanted my life back, there was nothing I could do staying in hiding,' she added. 'I was sick, I couldn't eat, I was depressed.'
In total, Keating sent Ms Saper over 30 videos and hundreds of emails between September and November 2024. When he returned to the UK in March 2023, police arrested him and found black rope and a tie in his suitcase.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, Keating claimed the threats were 'playful ridiculousness' and insisted that the ordeal had 'no adverse effect' on the influencer.
He even told officers that Ms Saper 'had shown an interest in him and there could be something there' between them – despite never having met her.
He also tried to argue that memes on his Instagram, including ones from Anchorman, proved his messages shouldn't have been taken seriously.
But the jury didn't buy it.
Prosecutor Alexandra Bull said Keating had created a 'one dimensional' version of the influencer in his head, becoming increasingly obsessed.
He will be sentenced at a later date.
In a BBC interview, Ms Saper described the lasting trauma of the ordeal: 'This was the first time in my life I was scared all the time. I would wake up scared, I would fall asleep scared.'
'I felt so disempowered, it just rattled my whole sense of identity,' she added.
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Daily Mail
17 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
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The Sun
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Your safety is paramount, no one has the right to make you feel unsafe in your own life. Stalking is illegal. If you think you are in danger or being stalked, report it to the police immediately - you have a right to feel safe in your home and workplace. Call 999 if you or someone else is in immediate danger. You can get advice from the National Stalking Helpline. National Stalking Helpline Telephone: 0808 802 0300 Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 4pm (except Wednesday 9:30am to 8pm) National Stalking Helpline Find out about call charges In March 2018, Hannah moved back in with her dad, but the packages followed her there. Then, WhatsApp groups started being created by someone posing as her. 'They were set up by a number in my name and the status was 'Karma', meaning payback,' explains Hannah. 'It would be my name, my picture, and all my friends and family were added, and it would start posting terrible things that I was supposedly doing, like avoiding tax. ' Kin even popped up in these chats, defending Hannah from the accusations and threatening the hackers if they didn't leave her alone. The 'fake Hannah' also targeted the jewellery start-up she had worked for, accusing them of tax evasion, but her previous employers realised the emails were out of character and forwarded them to a lawyer. 'Behaviour escalates in line with the stalker's emotional state,' says Dr Alan Underwood, a clinical psychologist at Queen Mary University of London, who specialises in stalking threat assessment. 'I've seen cases where individuals have escalated behaviour with the intent that the person would seek them out to solve the problem or get support from them. "This allows them to feel 'connected' to the person they have targeted.' By the end of March 2018, Hannah was at breaking point. 'The stalking had completely worn me down, both mentally and physically. 'I was constantly anxious, always looking over my shoulder, and unable to sleep. It felt like I was losing parts of myself just trying to stay safe,' she says. She went to the police armed with as much evidence as she could gather, and officers attempted to arrest Kin, but could not locate him. They always managed to find out my new numbers, email addresses and social media accounts. Meanwhile, the stalking continued until, in August 2019, Hannah jumped at the offer to work in Colombo, Sri Lanka, thinking it would offer her a fresh start. She was wrong. 'In August 2019, I posted a picture of my new boyfriend, who I'd met through a mutual friend in Sri Lanka, on social media and he started receiving emails telling him what a diseased, disgusting person I was,' says Hannah. Another email to her boyfriend included a rape fantasy. 'They always managed to find out my new numbers, email addresses, and social media accounts,' adds Hannah. At the same time, she began receiving up to five emails a day from an anonymous account called Premium Escorts, informing her she was now on their books. People she was in contact with – including work contacts – began getting emails from the bogus agency, which claimed to be selling her sexual services and contained fake reviews from her former 'clients'. She was bombarded with emails addressed to 'Hooker Hani', with pornographic images attached, as well as language that implied the sender was watching her every move. One included an image of Hannah at a Halloween party on a beach, cropped into her chest. 'That picture was creepy because it didn't match any of the event pictures on the organisers' website. I don't know where he got that from,' says Hannah. Despite the continuing abuse, police were unable to confirm that all the emails had come from the same source, and the case was officially closed on January 30, 2020. Hannah returned to the UK four months later – and again, the stalking followed her. Changing email addresses, passwords and phone numbers eight times in two years had no effect. I didn't know what was going to happen next. My phone was ringing every second. I would answer, and it would go dead. It was getting worse and worse, and it followed me wherever I went. I couldn't get away from it. 'I didn't know what was going to happen next,' she says. 'My phone was ringing every second. I would answer, and it would go dead. "It was getting worse and worse, and it followed me wherever I went. I couldn't get away from it. "It was coming from so many different angles.' Then, in 2021, Hannah and Carole exchanged emails discussing the possibility of making a podcast about her ordeal. 'Within a month, everything just stopped. Emails, messages, calls. . . everything,' says Hannah, who is convinced this is proof that her emails were being read. 'I felt like I could finally breathe again, but I was still on edge waiting for something else to happen, almost suspicious that the calm wouldn't last.' In the course of making Stalked, a team of experts were called on to analyse all the emails Hannah was sent, in the hope they could reveal if Kin was solely responsible. Forensic linguists used by the FBI found that certain words and phrases in emails written by Kin also appeared in emails from her stalker. Ethical data scientists looked at the technical evidence and concluded that all the emails were coordinated from a single source – a source Hannah believes was Kin, whose current whereabouts are unknown. He has remained silent throughout the podcast run, speaking only through lawyers, strongly denying stalking Hannah and calling the podcast's allegations 'false and without foundation'. 'Right now, I'm just really loving being free from all of this,' says Hannah, who is still trying to make sense of what happened. 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Telegraph
a day ago
- Telegraph
Minorities in the Middle East are facing extinction
Father Tony Boutros is a Catholic priest in Sweida, southern Syria. He is no stranger to ethnic unrest; in 2015, he was kidnapped during a spate of abductions of Christians in the country. The clergyman survived that brush with death. But he may not be so fortunate next time. This week, he recorded a message begging the international community for help. 'We ask the US, Europe, the Vatican, and the whole world for international protection for this region of Sweida, all of it, for us and for our Druze brothers, my dear ones,' he said. 'Look at the massacres that happened to us in Sweida.' As he spoke, hundreds of Druze civilians, including women and children, were being kidnapped, tortured, executed and mutilated, with Christians suffering at their side. They fought back but there were fears of genocide. The Syrian Bedouin, who had started the onslaught, were soon backed by forces from Damascus, who joined the violence despite being ostensibly sent to quell it. Before long, Sweida was a magnet for every Sunni tribe in the region, with thousands of militiamen brandishing Kalashnikovs and knives streaming south on motorcycles, in cars and in buses. 'Your fight isn't just with Syrians, it's with the entire Muslim world,' one masked jihadi said in a chilling video. 'We'll hunt you down wherever you are, just like the Jews.' The world ignored the priest's desperate pleas. Apart from Jerusalem. This week, Israel Defense Forces jets pushed the murderous mob back for the sake of its own security – Sweida is 45 miles from Israel – as well as that of the Druze. It also provided large quantities of humanitarian aid. This stemmed the tide, though appallingly not for long. The violence continues. Israel, you say? Israel? So it was that the UN secretary-general demanded 'an immediate cessation of all violations of Syria's sovereignty', while the EU urged Jerusalem to 'immediately cease its strikes'. God knows what Father Boutros made of that. This was just the latest round of ethnic bloodshed to have ravaged Syria since Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the former Islamic State and al-Qaeda terrorist, toppled Assad in December with support from Turkey. He has been bafflingly fêted by the West. There was inexplicable appearance on Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell's podcast The Rest is Politics, not to mention visits from world leaders and sanctions relief. Under Jolani's rule, Alawites and Christians have been massacred in sadistic scenes that have often been captured on social media. One video showed the corpse of a vintner being trampled face-down in his own wine by the soldiers of Allah in March. Was the old jihadi powerless to stop his men? Or had he little desire to do so? This time it was the turn of the Druze. Numbering up to a million, they adhere to a mystical faith that believes both in the God of Abraham and reincarnation. About 150,000 reside in Israel and are counted among its most doughty soldiers. Others live across the Levant. That such an obscure people roused little global sympathy is predictable. After all, they were not being menaced by the Israelis, so who cares? From a Jewish perspective, however, and perhaps a Muslim one, it is hard to understand the lack of concern in the Christian West for Christians in the Middle East. A century ago, they comprised 20 per cent of the population of the region. After decades of bloody persecution, that number stands at under three per cent. Not a single placard has been raised. For a country embarrassed by its religious heritage, all of this is a bit awkward for us, I suppose. Anyway, back to Gaza.
