R v Joshua Truksa

On 2 September in the Crown Court at Salisbury before HHJ Rufus Taylor, the appellant (then aged 32) was acquitted of sending a letter/electronic communication/article with intent to cause distress or anxiety, contrary to section 1(1)(a) of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. On the same day, a restraining order pursuant to section 5(a)(1) of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 was imposed. The appellant now appeals against sentence by leave of Bright J, who also granted a representation order for counsel. He has had the advantage of being represented by Mr Hirsch today.

The facts can be shortly stated. In the spring of 2021, the appellant and the complainant met at Bournemouth University for Media and Communications and became friends. In October 2022 the complainant graduated and in the early part of 2023 they had a conversation about her home country in which she expressed her views about communism, her likely career and corruption within that country. The appellant recorded these conversations without her knowledge. It was common ground that he subsequently created a podcast using things which he had covertly recorded her saying.

In March 2023, he telephoned her stating that if she went to her home country then he would release the recording to her possible employers at a university in that country which would force her to stay in the United Kingdom. The appellant also sent an email to that university which was sent on to the complainant’s father. The appellant denied that the call was intended to cause alarm or distress and said that he wanted to provide the complainant with ammunition in any asylum claim to remain in the United Kingdom as she had indicated to him that she was not keen to return to her home country. He anticipated that she would record their conversation on the date in question, and she had done so, and his intention was to help her.

As we have said, the appellant was charged with an offence contrary to section 11A of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. The date of trial was fixed for 2 September 2024 but the trial collapsed because the complainant was in her home country and said that she was not prepared to return at that time. The prosecution then applied for a restraining order on acquittal.

The judge read the complainant’s statements, as we have done. He also listened to a 20-minute recording of a conversation between the appellant and the complainant in which she repeatedly begged him not to publish the podcast and he repeatedly threatened to do so if she did not abandon her plan to take a job in her home country and instead return to the United Kingdom. To the complainant’s obvious and increasing distress he made it quite clear that he intended to prevent the complainant from exercising her choice to go to and work in a communist country, specifically her home country.

We too have listened to the recording in its entirety. It is sufficient at this point to say that we unreservedly agree with the judge’s assessment of that recording and what it showed of the appellant. We have also listened to an 8-minute extract from the podcast which was what he threatened to publish when blackmailing her during the longer conversation. The creation of this podcast with the intention of blackmailing her with it is just one of the egregious aspects of this case.

The judge gave his decision in terms that were forthright but entirely appropriate in the circumstances of this case. Having outlined the relevant principles the judge rehearsed the facts largely as we have set them out above. In the course of doing so, he said:

“She then, in February 2023 was due to go to [her home country] to see her family and he was going to go with her, but it culminated in a telephone call which I have just listened to in March 2023 in which effectively, he blackmailed her that, if she goes to [her home country], then he would release this podcast to her possible employers at the University... thereby spiking her application and forcing her to remain in the United Kingdom. His defence to the indictment was simply that this was simply to provide ammunition for her in any asylum claim to remain in the United Kingdom and that his purpose wasn’t to cause her alarm or distress.

Well, I have listened to the recording and it seems to me that he can be described in that as obsessive, self-centred, domineering, arrogant and somewhat deranged. He compares his attempt or his action in publishing the podcast to, comparing it to the last evacuation by helicopters from the US Embassy in Saigon in 1975, saying that he had the power to save her. In addition, I have seen a further statement of August and two screenshots which contain the screenshot of the email that he sent to [the University] which begins,

‘I have information for you relating to a financial crime.’

He then goes on to say that the Rector had agreed to accept a bribe from someone else, as testified by the daughter who was the Complainant in the case, and then puts a link to this podcast and he sends that both to the Rector but then sent it to her as well, so that she knows what he’s done.

As I have said to Mr Hirsch, counsel appearing on behalf of the Defendant, it’s difficult to imagine any clearer evidence of the Defendant’s intention. I’ve heard it in glorious technicolour. I am quite satisfied, in fact I am satisfied to the criminal standard, that such an order is necessary to prevent further harassment by him of her, and so I make the Restraining Order...”

On the appellant’s behalf Mr Hirsch now submits that it was wrong in principle to make the restraining order in circumstances where he submits the judge did not explain why it was necessary to protect a person from further harassment. In his oral submissions today he developed the submission that a restraining order was unnecessary because it was some 18 months since the events to which we have referred, and no further contact had happened.

This submission is unarguable. In his sentencing remarks as a whole and the passage we have cited above in particular, the judge made it completely clear that he considered that the evidence he had seen, central to which was the recording to which he had listened, demonstrated an obsessive mindset that gave rise to real risk of further harassment. In doing so he made the factual basis for imposing the order and the reasons for doing so completely clear.

The Judge was right to impose it in the terms that he did; the contrary is not arguable. This appeal has no merit whatsoever; it is dismissed.