'Toxic masculinity' Preston man stalked and intimidated mum of two he was obsessed with | Preston Crown Court

A Preston man convicted of stalking and witness intimidation has pleaded with a judge to deport him to Poland to serve his prison sentence closer to his family.

Hotel worker Lukasz Melczarek was jailed for a total of 18 months when he appeared before the city’s Crown Court for sentence this week – five years after being charged.

But Judge Guy Mathieson told him deportation was a matter for the Home Office to consider, and in the meantime he imposed a restraining order prohibiting him from making future contact with his former girlfriend.

The court heard Melczarek, who had been in the UK for 14 years and lived and worked in Preston, had been obsessed with the woman and carried out a prolonged stalking campaign after she broke off their relationship.

When she called police to report his behaviour he put pressure on her to withdraw her statement. The court also heard the 42-year-old had twice failed to surrender to bail – once being absent for a year before the case came to trial in Magistrates Court and again for three years before he could be sentenced in Crown Court.

Judge Mathieson said both had been deliberate attempts to “derail” the case and avoid facing justice.

Melczarek, now living near Keswick in the Lake District, represented himself in Crown Court. He had pleaded not guilty to stalking and witness intimidation when he first appeared before Preston Magistrates back in June 2021 but was found guilty after a trial. The case was adjourned for sentence, but he failed to attend hearings saying he was ill, although he was unable to provide medical evidence. Eventually a warrant was issued for his arrest and he was detained in April 2023.

He was then committed to Preston Crown Court to be sentenced in July 2023 and once again failed to attend. Another warrant was issued and he was finally arrested in January this year.

Prosecuting barrister Niamh Leong told the court Malczarek had met his former girlfriend, a mother of two, through a dating app in January 2021. She had made it very clear to him she was only looking for a casual relationship.

They met up a few times and he stayed over at her house at weekends. But she decided she needed more space, but he called her frequently and pressured her to see him more, not less. He started to ask her if she was seeing someone else and why she didn’t want to see him. He became “obsessed, suspecting her of being in another relationship, said Miss Leong.

She made it clear she only wanted to see him once a week, but he didn’t respect that. Then he gained access to her phone and confronted her about messages from another man.

He told her he loved her and began to be more aggressive, bombarding her with messages. He turned up at the school when she was picking one of her children up. She told him to stay away and not to contact her again, but he ignored her request.

By May, four months after the relationship had started, he arrived at her house in Bootle, Merseyside with flowers and presents for the children. She didn’t answer the door. Shortly after he created a WhatsApp group on which he shared stories about her and also contacted her ex-partner. So she contacted the police to report his behaviour.

He was arrested and denied stalking her. After he was released he continued to contact her and in one phone call, lasting around two hours, he demanded she withdraw her statement to police. More calls came and in desperation she changed her phone number to prevent him contacting her again.

When he was arrested again a number of phones and SIM cards were discovered at his home. He refused to provide PIN numbers for police to examine them.

In a victim impact statement the woman said the way Malczarek behaved had made her unwell. She had become more anxious and felt she had been robbed of her privacy. She was even scared to go out.

The court heard Malczarek had no previous convictions in the UK, but had four offences back in Poland, one of which was a case of harassment in 2012.

Speaking via an interpreter he told Judge Mathieson he had been in a “very serious relationship” with the woman. But she hadn’t told him she had a (estranged) husband or another partner she was also seeing.

He had spent more than £2,000 on modernising her home “and treated the children as if they were my own”. He had helped her as much as he could. “We were totally together,” he added. “She asked me for help and I was offering her help.

“She never said she was in a relationship with another man and had a husband. I didn’t do anything wrong.

“She said she wanted it to be casual, but I can’t accept casual. Why did she say I am a bad person?”

During a speech from the dock lasting one hour 45 minutes Judge Mathieson told Malczarek four times he didn’t need to go through the evidence which had been presented during his trial at Magistrates Court.

Eventually he said: “You were convicted after trial. This hearing is not going to listen to you saying you didn’t commit these offences. I know you don’t accept the verdict of the court, but I have to be true to the findings of (that) court and I will not listen to anymore of your explanation as to why it is you were wrongly convicted.

“You can’t now say ‘I didn’t commit these offences, the magistrates were wrong’. The magistrates at the trial didn’t accept your evidence and found you guilty and that is that. You can’t ask me today to find you not guilty and to explain why you are not guilty is irrelevant to this sentence exercise.”

Malczarek asked if he could appeal the guilty verdicts. The judge said he only had 21 days from the trial to do that and this was three years ago. As such he could only appeal against the sentence he was about to pass.

“You have quite deliberately delayed proceedings. There is absolutely no possibility of you being given leave to appeal, it is out of time so long after you have been found guilty.

“I can’t stop you, but I would be astonished if it was granted. You have been convicted and your opportunity to challenge that was at trial and you did and you lost. What you are doing is trying to tell me why you shouldn’t have been convicted. That’s not the purpose of this hearing and I will hear no more about it.”

Malczarek asked if the judge could impose a suspended sentence. If not could he could he go to Poland and serve a prison sentence there?

In sentencing, Judge Mathieson said the charges had come from a “casual, fun relationship” with a woman Malczarek had met online.

“For you it became much more intense, and once she tried to end the relationship, or at least keep her distance from you, you refused to accept that and she became an obsession for you. You demonstrated what is now called toxic masculinity, a sense of entitlement to know what she is doing, where and who she is doing it with and allowing you to monitor every aspect of her life.

“You took to visiting her address uninvited, you repeatedly called her mobile, pestering her, pestering her friends, checking her social media. You had no right to do it and you have invaded every part of her life. You persisted despite her best efforts to so ‘no’.

“You became more hurtful setting up a WhatsApp group to humiliate her in front of family and friends. You were arrested for stalking, but even that didn’t stop you. You turned on her and called her and made demands in a two-hour phone call that she should retract her allegations. You continued to deny the offences, so you put her through a trial. You failed to attend the magistrates court in March 2022 and were at large for nearly a year before that case could take place.

“You were sent to Crown Court for sentence in July 2023 and again you failed to attend and so for the best part of three years you have sought to avoid the sentencing and the consequences of your offences, selfishly trying to avoid justice for so long.

“You still seek to blame her for your actions. You keep saying you don’t know why you have been convicted. But you were convicted after trial so your suggestions that you did nothing wrong I have to ignore. These matters are so serious – particularly the way you have absented yourself from these proceedings - that only a period of prison can be justified.”

The judge said that witness intimidation, attempting to get the woman to change her evidence, was the most serious of the charges. He also said that both cases of failing to surrender to court were “deliberate attempts on your part to first derail proceedings in Magistrates Court and thereafter to delay sentence now.”

“You delayed this hearing by three years and also delayed the trial in Magistrates Court for a year.”

For witness intimidation he sentenced Malczarek to 15 months in prison. He gave him six months for stalking to run concurrently. In addition he sentenced him to three months for delaying the Crown Court hearing and one month for delaying the Magistrates Court trial, both to run concurrent with each other, but consecutive to the witness intimidation, making a total of 18 months in prison. He also granted a restraining order banning him from making contact with the victim.

“You are to leave her alone in every way, shape or form. Allow her to get on with her life without you in it.”