Uncensored - Piers Morgan - 20240605_baby-reindeer-exclusive-fiona-harveys-first-stalki
Aired: 2024-06-05
Duration: 38:00


=== A Threatening Traineeship Candidate (10:34) ===

[00:00:00]  I'm extremely concerned that this woman might also be moving close to where I live.
[00:00:05]  Do you feel threatened by that?
[00:00:07]  I always felt threatened.
[00:00:08]  I just never knew what she was capable of.
[00:00:11]  She was rude to staff.
[00:00:12]  She shouted at people.
[00:00:14]  She was inappropriate with a male.
[00:00:16]  She threw a book across the office and hit somebody with it.
[00:00:19]  She tried to follow a male member of staff phone.
[00:00:22]  I was horrified.
[00:00:23]  She just went completely crazy and started screaming at me.
[00:00:27]  Very similar to the scene in episode one in Richard Gadd's show.
[00:00:32]  Don't go there!
[00:00:34]  Every day I'd come into the office, the answer phone would be full of messages, all from her.
[00:00:40]  I had grown adults in tears, terrified that she was going to harm them.
[00:00:45]  That was the point at which I thought I can take no more of this.
[00:00:48]  Do you have any doubt that she is a dangerous stalker?
[00:00:54]  When Richard Gadd's character in Baby Reindeer goes looking for evidence about his stalker Martha, he quickly finds news reports with chilling echoes of his own experiences.
[00:01:12]  I sat there for hours taking it all in, piecing together her whole timeline.
[00:01:16]  Her graduate job, how she got fired for inappropriate behaviour with the boss, how she started hanging around outside his house, then falsely reporting into the police for abusing his disabled child.
[00:01:26]  This other time she attacked his mother in the street, a four and a half year prison sentence.
[00:01:30]  As with Fiona Harvey herself, it didn't take long for the real identity of the person at the heart of that story to become widespread public knowledge.
[00:01:37]  Her name is Laura Ray and as the apparently fictional headline suggests, she is a lawyer who claims that Fiona Harvey stalked and harassed her and her family many years before she ever met Gad.
[00:01:48]  I put those claims to Fiona Harvey during our interview.
[00:01:51]  The son reported an interview with Laura Ray, who you've referenced, who accused you of inappropriate behaviour whilst you worked with her.
[00:01:58]  She headhunted me from another firm because she needed someone to do employment law and I'm pretty good at employment law.
[00:02:05]  She said that she had to sack you days later because you were completely incapable of behaving yourself.
[00:02:10]  I walked.
[00:02:10]  Her staff were really, really rude to me.
[00:02:13]  She then said that following you leaving, obviously very quickly, that you then harassed her.
[00:02:19]  Mrs. Ray said she was so frightened she issued workers at her firm with personal alarms.
[00:02:25]  You were then served an interim interdict to stop you from contacting the lawyer or her politician husband.
[00:02:32]  Yeah, that's nonsense.
[00:02:33]  An interim interdict.
[00:02:34]  Check this out.
[00:02:35]  There is no interim interdict in Scotland.
[00:02:39]  Well after that interview, which has now been seen by nearly 14 million people on the uncensored YouTube channel alone, Laura Ray contacted me and said she'd like her opportunity to respond.
[00:02:49]  And she joins me now in the studio.
[00:02:51]  Laura, thank you very much for coming down from Scotland for this.
[00:02:55]  I can only imagine that this is something that you hoped had disappeared from your life a long time ago.
[00:03:01]  But because of the Netflix series and how incredibly successful it's been, one of the most watched series in living memory, it's brought it all back to your door and your family and what you say you went through at the hands of Fiona Harvey.
[00:03:15]  So first of all, when did you know Netflix were doing a series?
[00:03:19]  Well I found out about five weeks ago.
[00:03:22]  The male on Sunday contacted me and asked me had I seen Baby Reindeer and I had no idea of what they were talking about so they suggested I go and watch an episode of it which I did and then I spoke to them and I couldn't believe it.
[00:03:36]  From the very beginning it was obvious it was the same woman.
[00:03:39]  It was Fiona Harvey.
[00:03:41]  You know the actress who does a very good job sounds like her, looks like her, mimicked her to a T.
[00:03:49]  And uses the same phrases which they found on the real Fiona Harvey's Twitter account.
[00:03:54]  Yes, I mean I have a file full of papers which are letters from her, emails, faxes and so forth, and it's all identical.
[00:04:04]  And you yourself were identified very quickly from the series because there could only have been one Scottish lawyer who'd been through his experience with Fiona Harvey because it was all documented.
[00:04:14]  Well I think it's because it was so unusual that she was a female stalker stalking another female.
[00:04:21]  And so I was actually identified by the press before she was.
[00:04:25]  I think the press sort of held back a bit with her for about a week and then I think it was the son who came out and said who she was.
[00:04:32]  This was the Sunday Mail, one of the top Scottish papers at the time, MP wife and a stalker.
[00:04:38]  Your husband Jimmy was an MP at the time.
[00:04:41]  And it was a front page splash story.
[00:04:43]  So this wasn't a quiet small thing.
[00:04:45]  This was a massive news story in Scotland that people would have been aware of.
[00:04:49]  It was indeed, yes.
[00:04:51]  So when you realised that your story was being recounted, albeit with the names changed, in Baby Reindeer, how did it make you feel?
[00:04:59]  Well, I just couldn't believe it.
[00:05:02]  I just couldn't believe what was going on.
[00:05:04]  And I just was in a state of shock for about a week.
[00:05:09]  Really?
[00:05:10]  Yeah.
[00:05:11]  It had a really bad effect on me.
[00:05:12]  It had a very bad effect on me.
[00:05:14]  And even now, after five weeks or so, when I'm getting over it a bit, it's still very triggering every time I see something.
[00:05:21]  I mean, I've never watched YouTube before, apart from when I saw your programme a few weeks ago.
[00:05:27]  And yet, every day there are more comments and people, psychiatrists and so on, going on talking about the show, analysing your interview.
[00:05:36]  And it just all triggers everything back to me every time I see it.
[00:05:39]  It's very, very distressing.
[00:05:41]  Have you been emotional about this?
[00:05:43]  I have, yes.
[00:05:45]  You've been left to tears from?
[00:05:47]  Well, yes, yes.
[00:05:48]  I mean, I'm a reasonably robust person.
[00:05:51]  I'm an advocate.
[00:05:52]  I appear in court all the time.
[00:05:53]  So I'm not easily prone to tears.
[00:05:55]  But this has got me very, very anxious and upset.
[00:05:59]  And particularly since a few weeks ago, I thought she was down in London, but a few weeks ago, we were told that in the little village near us called Bucklivey, which is where she's from originally, she's now been looking to buy a house, we've been told.
[00:06:14]  Now, I don't know whether that's true, but apparently journalists were going round the doors in Bucklivie about two weeks ago asking about this.
[00:06:22]  So I'm extremely concerned that this woman not only is abusing me on the internet on her Facebook pages and on every opportunity she can, defaming me, but she might also be moving close to where I live.
[00:06:37]  Do you feel threatened by that?
[00:06:38]  I do feel threatened.
[00:06:40]  I always felt threatened by her because I just never knew what she was capable of.
[00:06:46]  Let's go back to when you first encountered her.
[00:06:49]  Yeah.
[00:06:50]  Obviously, she says that you headhunted her to be a specialist in the employment law at your firm at the time.
[00:06:56]  Is that true?
[00:06:57]  No.
[00:06:58]  She was looking for a traineeship.
[00:07:00]  She had been looking for a traineeship for about four years and couldn't get anyone to take her on, or at least I think she'd been taken on twice before me, but for very brief periods of time.
[00:07:12]  So you're supposed to get a traineeship within two years of getting your legal diploma.
[00:07:17]  She must have got several extensions on that because she was way out of time.
[00:07:22]  So I received quite a number of letters from her and they were in such familiar terms that I thought this must be somebody I've met somewhere, perhaps through the Labour Party.
[00:07:32]  So then when I got engaged to Jimmy, she sent me a congratulations card.
[00:07:37]  So I then got another letter from her saying, oh, I'm disappointed you haven't interviewed me for a traineeship.
[00:07:44]  And I felt rather bad about that if this was somebody that I'd met and perhaps overlooked.
[00:07:49]  So I invited her to come in and see me to talk to me.
[00:07:53]  And I have to say, she was reasonably credible.
[00:07:57]  I'm not daft.
[00:07:58]  You know, she didn't behave in the way she subsequently behaved during the interview.
[00:08:04]  But I did have a few concerns about her.
[00:08:07]  She was quite, she went into a bit of detail with me about her family circumstances, which I won't repeat.
[00:08:14]  But she made me feel very sorry for her.
[00:08:16]  And I said, okay.
[00:08:17]  She said, I've never had anybody giving me a chance.
[00:08:20]  Would you please help me out here?
[00:08:22]  I've got no money, etc.
[00:08:24]  So I said, okay.
[00:08:26]  And she only worked for me for two weeks.
[00:08:28]  Did you believe that she was qualified?
[00:08:31]  Oh, no, I knew she wasn't qualified.
[00:08:32]  She was looking for a traineeship.
[00:08:34]  Trainees do menial jobs like, you know, at the start filing or, you know, sitting in and things.
[00:08:40]  You know, you're training them.
[00:08:41]  They're not doing anything of any great worth for you.
[00:08:45]  So you need to have a two-year training.
[00:08:47]  And she said she had a law degree.
[00:08:49]  Yeah, but that's not enough.
[00:08:50]  No, it's not full legal training.
[00:08:52]  But do you think that she even had the law degree?
[00:08:54]  I think she had the law degree because in my file of papers, I do have a copy of something from the Law Society where it does state that she's got a law degree.
[00:09:02]  So I believe she has a law degree.
[00:09:05]  And I believe that some years later, she got the diploma in law, which you require to have in Scotland.
[00:09:11]  Do you think she ever practiced law?
[00:09:12]  No, I don't think so.
[00:09:14]  I mean, she certainly, I don't think she ever got a traineeship in Scotland.
[00:09:18]  She, I know for sure, worked with another firm after myself and was fired from there and caused that firm a lot of grief.
[00:09:27]  She claimed in our interview that you didn't even know the name of your own firm.
[00:09:31]  Well, that's nonsense.
[00:09:32]  I mean, my firm was called L and L Lawrence at the time I employed her.
[00:09:36]  We subsequently amalgamated with a much larger firm called Drummond Miller who took over ourselves and another trade union firm called Macphail's.
[00:09:45]  So to keep the connection with the firms and to keep the goodwill, they called us the Macphail-Lawrence Partnership in Glasgow.
[00:09:53]  And then a few years later, we were all subsumed into Drummond Miller.
[00:09:57]  Once she started working for you, what happened?
[00:10:02]  Well, I was out of the office quite a lot because we had an office in Glasgow, an office in Edinburgh.
[00:10:08]  So she was put onto a desk where what she had to do was jot down details of anyone phoning on our accident hotline.
[00:10:16]  Now this was the days before the internet.
[00:10:18]  So we had a special phone number, a free phone number.
[00:10:22]  Members of the public could phone if they wanted advice about an accident.
[00:10:26]  So all she had to do was to write down the name and address of the people, take some basic details, and then get a solicitor to phone them.

=== Volunteering to Help Her Bank (03:12) ===

[00:10:34]  She wouldn't have been capable of giving advice because she had no experience.
[00:10:39]  She'd never done anything.
[00:10:40]  Because it was a clerk job, really.
[00:10:42]  Yeah, pretty much.
[00:10:44]  A trainee solicitor is not quite a clerk, but I mean, they're a very junior member of your staff.
[00:10:49]  I mean, kind of office clerks to a level of stuff.
[00:10:52]  Well, office clerks can often have a lot more experience in certain things.
[00:10:57]  She was very much a trainee solicitor role.
[00:11:00]  So, you know, she was there to learn from us rather than the other way around.
[00:11:04]  And how did she do?
[00:11:05]  She was dreadful.
[00:11:07]  I mean, I wasn't there all the time, but essentially, she was rude to staff.
[00:11:13]  She shouted at people.
[00:11:15]  She was inappropriate with a male member of staff.
[00:11:18]  She tried to follow a male member of staff home.
[00:11:22]  I mean, all sorts of things happened.
[00:11:23]  She threw a book across the office and hit somebody with it.
[00:11:27]  But on the hotline, she was heard to be saying to people, Oh, you don't want to come here.
[00:11:33]  I'll give you the name of another firm of solicitors.
[00:11:36]  So we were paying all this money for this premium-rated hotline, and she was giving the details of our competitors to individuals.
[00:11:44]  And did you try and have it out with her?
[00:11:47]  Well, I did.
[00:11:47]  I mean, the first thing that had happened was on day one, she came into my cashier demanding that the cashier give her a sub.
[00:11:55]  And her cashier, Caroline, said to her, I'm sorry, but we don't do that.
[00:11:58]  You'll need to wait to the end of the month.
[00:12:01]  A couple of days later, she came into my office, burst through the door, very upset and kind of angry.
[00:12:08]  And I said, what is it?
[00:12:09]  And she said, well, there's a man downstairs who won't leave.
[00:12:13]  I owe him money.
[00:12:14]  And I thought, goodness, somebody's sitting in my reception.
[00:12:17]  Anybody else who's waiting there will think I owe this man money.
[00:12:21]  So I said to her, what's this all about?
[00:12:23]  And she said, well, I own for a car repair.
[00:12:26]  And she said, so I need a sub.
[00:12:28]  And I said, well, I'm disappointed you keep asking for subs because we've told you we're not going to do that.
[00:12:33]  I said, how much is it?
[00:12:34]  She said, £250.
[00:12:36]  And she said, she borrowed the money from her auntie, but when she went into the envelope, it wasn't enough money in it.
[00:12:43]  And she said, she had no money to live till the end of the month.
[00:12:46]  So I said to her, I'll tell you what I'll do.
[00:12:48]  I'll give you £250 out of my own personal money.
[00:12:52]  Go and pay the man and then come up and talk to me.
[00:12:55]  So she came up and talked to me.
[00:12:56]  I said, keep the other £230 to keep yourself going.
[00:13:01]  I said, and you know, she's then started to tell me about various financial problems she had, which I won't go into.
[00:13:08]  But I volunteered to go and speak to her bank to try and help her out.
[00:13:12]  I was trying my level best to give this person a helping hand.
[00:13:16]  And I went down, I spoke to her bank about a week later, smoothed everything out for her.
[00:13:22]  And when I came back to the office, she started saying to me, oh, I've been on the phone all afternoon for the Law Society to find out what will happen if I go bankrupt.
[00:13:31]  I said, well, Fiona, if you want to be a solicitor or ever be in a partnership, that's not the way to go.
[00:13:37]  So anyway, I made a suggestion to her that she might want to sell the old car that she had, which had been the cause of the bill for the breakdown.

=== Staff Complaints and Threats (07:27) ===

[00:13:46]  And at that, she just went completely crazy and started screaming at me.
[00:13:51]  Very similar to the scene in episode one in Richard Gadd's show.
[00:13:55]  What was she screaming?
[00:13:56]  Don't you speak to me like that.
[00:13:59]  And she did the same thing with a couple of other members of staff.
[00:14:02]  One of my conveyancing staff was trying to show her how to do some kind of clause and a conveyance.
[00:14:08]  And she started shouting the same thing.
[00:14:11]  Don't you say that to me?
[00:14:13]  Don't speak to me like that.
[00:14:14]  But in a very loud and aggressive tone.
[00:14:17]  So it became quite obvious quite quickly that she really wasn't cut out for this kind of thing.
[00:14:24]  She one of the other things she did was she phoned up a disabled solicitor that we used to do Edinburgh agency work for and she phoned him up and said to him, Oh, I just want you to know that all the people here in this office, nobody likes you.
[00:14:42]  Everybody says nasty things about you and makes comments about you.
[00:14:47]  And what was his disability?
[00:14:49]  He was, I think he'd had polio, so he couldn't walk properly.
[00:14:54]  So, you know, it was nasty stuff.
[00:14:57]  She grabbed a phone from one of my members of staff who was on trying to explain something to a client who obviously was giving him some difficulty.
[00:15:07]  And she then started shouting abuse down the phone at the client.
[00:15:10]  So there was a whole number of these incidents.
[00:15:14]  And I had spent a few days in London.
[00:15:16]  I was on the executive of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers.
[00:15:20]  And I think it was one of their meetings I was at and doing other things in London seeing clients.
[00:15:25]  And I came back to the office sort of, this was at the end of the second week, so there'd been a few incidents I was aware of.
[00:15:32]  But by the time I got back, there was more and more being reported to me.
[00:15:37]  Staff members in tears because of the way she'd spoken to them.
[00:15:41]  So I got her into the office and I said, look, you know, this is not on.
[00:15:45]  I put some of the stuff to her.
[00:15:47]  I asked her about the phone line and she said, no, no, I didn't do that.
[00:15:52]  I didn't do that.
[00:15:52]  And then she said, oh, well, yes, I did, but I thought it was the right thing to do.
[00:15:56]  So I just said, well, I don't think, you know, you're cut out for here.
[00:16:01]  So I said to her, I'm afraid that's it.
[00:16:03]  I paid her for the month.
[00:16:04]  She'd only been there two weeks and obviously had done nothing apart from cause complete havoc.
[00:16:10]  And then she said, I'm not leaving.
[00:16:12]  I'm going to phone the Law Society.
[00:16:14]  I'm not leaving.
[00:16:15]  And she then started shouting and screaming, running around the office.
[00:16:20]  And eventually, my cashier and I, Caroline, had to get one arm on either side of her and actually march her out of the office.
[00:16:29]  And she stood out there for at least half an hour screaming abuse.
[00:16:33]  And that was when it all started.
[00:16:34]  Thereafter, every day I'd come into the office, the answer phone would be full of messages, all from her, all threatening, nasty.
[00:16:44]  What kind of threats?
[00:16:45]  I'll get you, you're not going to get away with this.
[00:16:48]  I'll get Jimmy Ray.
[00:16:50]  All that sort of stuff.
[00:16:51]  I know that sounds a bit vague, but the way it was said was in a very threatening manner.
[00:16:56]  And how many was she leaving on a daily basis?
[00:16:58]  Well, the answer phone would be filled up.
[00:17:00]  How many was that, roughly?
[00:17:01]  I'm not sure how many messages, but she would rant on.
[00:17:04]  It would take probably about an hour's worth of every day.
[00:17:09]  And then when we amalgamated with the other firms, again, she did the same thing.
[00:17:15]  Not necessarily every day by that point.
[00:17:17]  She blew a bit hot and cold, but it was pretty persistent for a couple of years.
[00:17:23]  Also, years.
[00:17:25]  She did this for nearly five years.
[00:17:28]  So what she would do, given that way back in 1997, this was really at the start of the internet, so people weren't emailing to the same extent they do now.
[00:17:38]  What she would do would be phone up other solicitors or send them faxes with defamatory stuff about me saying how terrible I was, how terrible the firm was, accusing people of everything under the sun.
[00:17:51]  And then, you know, I would get phone calls from people I didn't know who would say, I'm really embarrassed.
[00:17:57]  I've had this fax through from this woman.
[00:17:59]  I don't know her and I don't know you, but I thought I ought to bring it to your attention.
[00:18:04]  So I had issued the staff with panic alarms, you know, right back at the beginning when all this started.
[00:18:10]  Because, you know, I had grown adults in tears, terrified that she was going to harm them, terrified that something awful was going to happen.
[00:18:18]  She also claimed that you and your husband Jimmy, who's sadly no longer with us, but she accused you of assaulting your three-year-old son Frankie, who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder.
[00:18:31]  Well, that was the kind of, that was the point at which I thought I can take no more of this.
[00:18:37]  I had heard from a lawyer some months before that who phoned me, who'd taken her on, and he said to me that he was in a terrible state because he'd fired her and he went home that night to find two social workers at his door.
[00:18:54]  The police were involved.
[00:18:55]  It was all taken very seriously.
[00:18:57]  And the accusation was that he'd been abusing his children.
[00:19:01]  This went to the children's schools and so on.
[00:19:03]  This man was on his knees and really upset.
[00:19:06]  And I said, well, you know, all I could do is perhaps speak to the sort of things she's done to me.
[00:19:12]  So when I was going to go to the bar in 2003, I had to do some exams the year before that.
[00:19:18]  So I went to Strathclyde University.
[00:19:21]  And who's the first person I see when I get to the university to start doing a couple of classes but her?
[00:19:27]  I couldn't believe it because at that point it had gone a bit quiet.
[00:19:31]  And there she was.
[00:19:32]  And from then on she followed me around the university.
[00:19:37]  She would stand right up against beside me and so on.
[00:19:40]  So I complained to the professor at the university.
[00:19:43]  And again, stalking wasn't really taken that seriously by people.
[00:19:47]  I think people just assumed, oh, it's two women who just don't get on or something like that.
[00:19:52]  So he said, oh, well, I've checked her records and she's not registered as a student here.
[00:19:57]  So I've got no locus over her.
[00:19:59]  And I said, well, if she's not registered as a student, can you not just throw her out, get the security and so act?
[00:20:04]  I don't like to do that.
[00:20:06]  Now, by the end of the university year, I got a letter to say that he apologised because she'd gone on to upset a number of members of staff, harass them, and other students.
[00:20:19]  So she knew that I'd made a complaint about them.
[00:20:22]  So one day, just after I made the complaint, I go home to find two social workers at my door saying to me, you know, we have some very serious allegations.
[00:20:33]  So I said to them, well, come in.
[00:20:35]  And I said, before you say anything to me, I said, and I do understand you've got a job to do and it's a very important job.
[00:20:42]  I said, but I want to tell you what I think is going on here.
[00:20:45]  So I explained to them about the other lawyer.
[00:20:47]  I explained to them everything and they confirmed, oh, yes, it's a woman who says that she's at university with you.
[00:20:54]  Now, initially, she gave a false name of another student, and it wasn't the other student because I contacted the other student.
[00:21:02]  But to cut a long story short, she made five complaints to the social work department, eventually screaming at them down the phone, demanding that my severely disabled son be taken into care.

=== Considering a Lawsuit for Harassment (15:38) ===

[00:21:14]  Now, to my mind, that was just the point at which I thought, no, enough is enough.
[00:21:19]  I'm not having this.
[00:21:20]  I'm not having this poor child beleagured in that way.
[00:21:24]  So I contacted the police.
[00:21:25]  The police didn't do anything.
[00:21:27]  But I was a consultant to Drummond Miller solicitors, and so they did the interim interdict for me.
[00:21:34]  So this is again a crucial part of this.
[00:21:36]  And before we get to the interim interdict, I just want to ask you, she said to me, she wasn't let go from your firm, but instead she walked.
[00:21:44]  Well, she was walked out the door, if I can put it that way.
[00:21:48]  But it certainly wasn't at her volition.
[00:21:49]  It wasn't at her volition.
[00:21:51]  She said she never had any legal proceedings or restraining orders against her.
[00:21:56]  But you say, and you provided documentary evidence of this, that there wasn't an interim interdict against her.
[00:22:04]  Now, just very simply, explain what that is.
[00:22:07]  Well, in Scotland at the time, there was no procedure for harassment type cases.
[00:22:12]  The only thing you could use was this procedure for interdict, which is when you want to try and get the court to stop someone from doing something that you fear they may do.
[00:22:23]  So that's the purpose of an interdict.
[00:22:25]  Now, because often the circumstances can be acute, you can apply for an interim interdict, which means there's an initial hearing before a judge who decides whether on the basis of the information it's appropriate to grant what is eventually a restraining order, an interim interdict.
[00:22:43]  So that was granted.
[00:22:45]  And we've seen the documents to support that, both the claim and the fact that it was granted.
[00:22:50]  Yeah, so there is an initial writ that sets out all the circumstances on which you're asking the judge to find that there are grounds for concern here.
[00:23:00]  And they're set out.
[00:23:02]  And it's basically what you've been detailing to me about the consistent, well, the terrible way she behaved in the office and afterwards, even worse, obviously, and then the accusations against you and your husband about the son and so on.
[00:23:15]  And what happened once that interim interdict was issued?
[00:23:19]  Well, it was served on her by sheriff officers.
[00:23:23]  And then she had...
[00:23:25]  And again, we just for viewers who are curious, the Sheriffdom of Glasgow and Strath Kelvin at Glasgow.
[00:23:32]  This is the initial writ here, and we've seen the follow-up documentation leading to the granting of the interim interdict.
[00:23:39]  So I was contacted by the solicitors to say it had been granted by the sheriff and that it was then served upon her the court order.
[00:23:49]  She then had 21 days in which to put in a notice of intention to defend, which she didn't do.
[00:23:56]  And she then would have had to put in defences.
[00:23:59]  Now what she says is that there is copy correspondence I've sent you where she contacted someone at Drummond Miller, one of the more senior partners there, who's now a judge.
[00:24:12]  She contacted him to say that she wasn't going to send him a copy of the defences and she was terribly busy, but she would get them in in the next couple of days.
[00:24:21]  She never put in any defences at all.
[00:24:24]  So my solicitors then contacted the court some weeks later, having waited for all the appropriate time periods and asked if they could, you know, what would happen then.
[00:24:37]  And basically they were told, well, the sheriff doesn't want to grant the permanent interdict against her until there is any further behaviour.
[00:24:46]  So the interdict lasted for a year and a day.
[00:24:50]  And knowing that she doesn't know anything about procedure and wasn't a qualified solicitor, we reckoned that she might not know that it wasn't actually going to be valid a year later.
[00:25:01]  So it was valid for a year and a day.
[00:25:04]  I never heard from her for 22 years.
[00:25:06]  So the interim interdict did what I was hoping it would do.
[00:25:10]  What we had agreed with the solicitors was that if she came back after a year and a day, we would just take out another interim interdict.
[00:25:18]  You never had to because she just had to because she disappeared.
[00:25:21]  And what was that feeling like when she disappeared?
[00:25:24]  It was relief, absolute relief.
[00:25:27]  I mean, I had enough on my plate.
[00:25:28]  Jimmy had a stroke about a year after all this.
[00:25:32]  I was looking after Frankie, who's severely handicapped.
[00:25:35]  Nobody knew at the time exactly what was wrong.
[00:25:38]  Do you think Jimmy's health was affected adversely by all the stress of this or not?
[00:25:44]  Jimmy was a pretty resilient guy, so no, I don't think so.
[00:25:47]  I think he was more worried about me and about Frankie than he was about her harming him.
[00:25:52]  I mean, to have social workers turn up at your door with that kind of allegation when your son is already pretty disabled, it's hard to imagine many worse things for someone to do to someone.
[00:26:04]  Well, exactly.
[00:26:06]  And I was horrified.
[00:26:07]  I couldn't believe that anyone could be so callous and cruel.
[00:26:11]  It's one thing having a go at me.
[00:26:13]  I didn't mind that to the same extent.
[00:26:16]  And, you know, she called me a lot of names.
[00:26:17]  She's continuing to do so.
[00:26:19]  Yes, she is.
[00:26:20]  And your letter to me when you contacted me was, unfortunately for me, I'm now collateral damage because Netflix allowed Miss Harvey to be so easily identifiable, which I think is inarguable.
[00:26:32]  Have Netflix made any attempt to approach you?
[00:26:35]  Well, their solicitors spoke to me.
[00:26:38]  They contacted somebody through the mail on Sunday who then contacted me and asked me would I speak to their lawyers.
[00:26:44]  So I had a conversation with them and really what they wanted from me was a copy of the interim interview.
[00:26:50]  And when was this?
[00:26:50]  About a week ago I spoke to them.
[00:26:52]  A week ago, but you hadn't heard from them before that.
[00:26:54]  I hadn't heard from them before that.
[00:26:55]  Certainly nobody approached me to say there's going to be a story coming out in which it will be very obvious that you are one of the victims.
[00:27:03]  Do you think from that it would be correct to assume they're maybe panicking about Netflix about the fallout from all this?
[00:27:09]  Well I really don't know.
[00:27:10]  I can't speak.
[00:27:11]  Mrs. Vera they've asked you for documentary evidence to support something which is a major plank of their series.
[00:27:17]  Yeah.
[00:27:18]  Well I suppose they've got to show that what they have done is materially true or substantially true.
[00:27:25]  Was what they put in Baby Rendezvous materially true about you?
[00:27:29]  Yes.
[00:27:30]  Well in the sense that there was a character who was a mother.
[00:27:34]  There was nothing of that in mind.
[00:27:36]  But the thrust of it, which was that she was sacked from a law firm and turned on her boss, that's true.
[00:27:43]  That somebody in it was a barrister.
[00:27:45]  I'm now a barrister.
[00:27:46]  So I think that's where that bit comes from.
[00:27:49]  And the bit about the sick stalker targeting the deaf child is absolutely clearly a reference taken along with everything else.
[00:27:57]  No question.
[00:27:57]  I mean, that's straight from this story.
[00:27:59]  Yeah.
[00:28:01]  Have you ever met Richard Gadd?
[00:28:02]  No.
[00:28:02]  No.
[00:28:03]  Because I put this question to her about how unusual it is to have somebody stalking two completely different people, both of whom, by her estimation, are fantasizing.
[00:28:12]  Let's take a look.
[00:28:14]  Why would two people who have no contact with each other at all, Laura Ray and Richard Gadd, why would they both portray you as a very unpleasant person?
[00:28:28]  I don't know why Richard Gadd has, but Laura woke her, it was certainly because I was going for parliamentary selection.
[00:28:32]  The two different, you get my point, two different people.
[00:28:34]  Yeah, but Richard Gadd has googled that.
[00:28:36]  Richard Gadd has used that as a drama.
[00:28:39]  That's the show.
[00:28:40]  Is when they find out that you had previously harassed this family.
[00:28:45]  I haven't harassed that family.
[00:28:46]  When you saw that exchange, what went through your mind?
[00:28:50]  I was horrified.
[00:28:51]  I mean, I've actually watched your interview a few times because the first time I saw it, I was in such shock watching her, seeing her, it just brought it all back again.
[00:28:59]  And I've watched it several times to see what is it she's saying about me.
[00:29:03]  And it's unbelievable that after the things she did, that she can say she wasn't harassing my family.
[00:29:09]  Of course she was harassing my family.
[00:29:11]  For many years.
[00:29:12]  For many years.
[00:29:13]  For longer than Richard Gadd.
[00:29:15]  When you've seen the fallout from the Netflix series plus my interview, particularly around the fact that she's adamant that she's never been in court, let alone admitted to stalking him or being convicted.
[00:29:30]  And there is no apparent evidence she ever was convicted of any crime.
[00:29:34]  What do you make of that?
[00:29:35]  Because that goes right to the heart for many people of the integrity of Richard Gadd's story.
[00:29:42]  It's hard to say, really.
[00:29:43]  I mean, I can't say whether she's got any convictions or not.
[00:29:46]  I know that the newspapers have looked for them and can't find them.
[00:29:50]  In Scotland, convictions can be spent after a certain number of years.
[00:29:54]  But it says that she was convicted, for example, for four and a half years for what she did to you and your family.
[00:29:59]  Well, she wasn't convicted for that.
[00:30:00]  I didn't press any kind of criminal charges.
[00:30:03]  So that is untrue.
[00:30:05]  So that's untrue.
[00:30:06]  I mean, again, back to Netflix's duty of care.
[00:30:08]  They're making it very easy for both Fiona Harvey and you to be quickly identified.
[00:30:14]  And yet a material fact that she was sent to prison for four and a half years for harassing you and your family, like it appears the same thing that Richard Gadd is saying about what happened to him.
[00:30:25]  Neither of those things may be true.
[00:30:27]  Well, it doesn't appear they are true.
[00:30:29]  And you're a lawyer.
[00:30:30]  That's quite a serious leap to go from somebody who may be harassing people, trolling a nasty, abusive person, to a convicted criminal.
[00:30:41]  Do you think?
[00:30:42]  But I agree with you.
[00:30:43]  I mean, I don't think for the sort of things she did to me, even if I had pressed for some kind of criminal conviction, I don't think she would have got very long, if any kind of custodial sentence.
[00:30:54]  Would she now, do you think?
[00:30:56]  For the same thing?
[00:30:57]  Have the laws tightened on this?
[00:30:59]  I don't think so.
[00:31:00]  I mean, I spoke to the police not so long ago and asked them about this, and certainly in Scotland, the law hasn't changed in line with the way it has in England on stalkers.
[00:31:09]  So it's still very difficult.
[00:31:10]  Basically, the police say unless she actually comes up and physically attacks me, there's nothing they can do to protect me.
[00:31:17]  How does, given the fact that journalists have been investigating whether she might be moving back to your area or looking for someone to live there, how does that make you feel?
[00:31:27]  Frightened.
[00:31:29]  What do you think she might be capable of doing?
[00:31:32]  I don't know.
[00:31:32]  I mean, I think one of the interesting things has been in all the press that has been about this, there's been a number of articles by psychiatrists who say that she probably has some kind of personality disorder.
[00:31:44]  I don't know, I'm not a doctor, and that she may have some sort of delusional disorder, and that people with these kind of disorders actually believe everything they say.
[00:31:53]  And that kind of, you know, in a weird way, makes sense to me because she contradicted herself right, left, and centre on your show.
[00:32:01]  I have correspondence in which she contradicts herself, which she says doesn't exist.
[00:32:06]  But I think she maybe genuinely does believe in her own little parallel universe.
[00:32:11]  I felt that she was peddling lines that she may believe, which is delusional, but that may be the case.
[00:32:18]  But I also think that she may have a very legitimate case against Netflix, Richard Gadd, Clark and Well Films.
[00:32:24]  If it turns out she's never been convicted of any crimes, twice in that series, both in relation to you and Richard Gadd, she's getting lengthy prison sentences for the stalking, and that doesn't appear to be true.
[00:32:38]  I agree with you, but I think what you then have to look at is what is that actually worth in terms of damages?
[00:32:44]  So you have to prove that your reputation has been damaged.
[00:32:47]  As far as I understand it, I'm not aware that Fiona has ever held down a job anywhere.
[00:32:53]  So I don't think there's any claim for loss of earnings.
[00:32:56]  But she has got top lawyers now, both here and in the US, going after Netflix quite hard.
[00:33:02]  You think she has got a good case?
[00:33:04]  Well, I'm sure she may have a good case, but the question is then, certainly in Scotland, what would it be worth?
[00:33:11]  You're looking at somebody who has a pattern of stalking, who stalked quite a number of people apart from myself.
[00:33:17]  People have been coming out of the woodwork to me, frightened to come forward, but letting me know that they know what's going on.
[00:33:25]  Do you have any doubt that she is a dangerous stalker?
[00:33:28]  I have no doubt she's a dangerous stalker, no doubt whatsoever.
[00:33:33]  What has this being raked up done to you?
[00:33:37]  Well, it's made me very anxious.
[00:33:40]  Certainly, you know, it's every so often.
[00:33:43]  I mean, I just every day I can't stop thinking about it.
[00:33:47]  And I can't stop obsessively watching YouTube and all these different channels where people are exploring the ins and outs of it.
[00:33:54]  Because you didn't want to do an interview like this.
[00:33:56]  You wanted this all just to, as it had been for a long time, just be part of the past.
[00:34:02]  But you felt compelled to because everyone was talking about you.
[00:34:05]  Well, I'm an advocate.
[00:34:06]  I've got a reputation to defend.
[00:34:09]  And the sting of what she says about me is basically that I'm a liar and that I'm an incompetent lawyer.
[00:34:15]  So that's not good news if you're an advocate in professional practice.
[00:34:19]  And I certainly wouldn't want any of my clients, my solicitors who instruct me or any clients that I represent to think any of that is true.
[00:34:27]  Have you considered suing her?
[00:34:31]  Well, I am considering suing her.
[00:34:33]  And certainly if Netflix give her £11 million, I'll be suing her.
[00:34:37]  Problem is that if she has no money, reparation claims are very expensive to mount.
[00:34:42]  There is very little point in me suing her if she's got nothing.
[00:34:46]  Has Richard Gadd made any attempt to reach out to you?
[00:34:49]  None at all.
[00:34:49]  Would you have expected him to?
[00:34:51]  Well, I mean, without him putting all this onto first an Edinburgh show and then a smash-it Netflix series, it would never have come to this.
[00:35:00]  Well, I don't know what I would expect.
[00:35:02]  I've never met him, and I can understand that, you know, he has written what I think is a very compelling TV series.
[00:35:09]  He's done very well out of it, and I sort of wish him well on that.
[00:35:14]  I do think that when he says that he changed all the details so that people wouldn't recognise her and she wouldn't recognise herself, that that is just untrue.
[00:35:23]  I mean, he could easily have made her somebody who didn't look like Fiona Harvey, who was, say, an accountant or a doctor.
[00:35:30]  Sorry, completely.
[00:35:31]  I mean, one of the Netflix chief executives is the Netflix policy chief.
[00:35:35]  He went into the UK Parliament several weeks ago and he said this.
[00:35:38]  Baby Ranger is an extraordinary story and it is obviously a true story of the horrific abuse that the writer and protagonist Richard Gadd suffered at the hands of a convicted stalker.
[00:35:51]  We did take every reasonable precaution in disguising the real-life identities of the people involved in that story.
[00:36:03]  Your response to that?
[00:36:05]  I disagree completely with what he says.
[00:36:07]  That's just not the case.
[00:36:10]  Do you feel better for doing an interview about this?
[00:36:13]  I do.
[00:36:13]  I have to say it has made me feel much better because I feel I've got my point of view across and I can now just try and put this to bed and ignore it.
[00:36:22]  Have you been getting an adverse reaction from people?
[00:36:27]  Well, my colleagues and friends, obviously not, and my colleagues at the bar have been very supportive.
[00:36:34]  But certainly online I've had adverse comments.
[00:36:37]  There is now a Fiona Harvey support group who are commenting that I look like a man and that I am Richard Gadd's trans girlfriend or they're suggesting that may be the case.
[00:36:49]  And I'd like to refute both of those peers.

=== Advice to Seek Psychiatric Help (01:08) ===

[00:36:52]  Do you think she's capable of violence against you?
[00:36:56]  Is that what worries you?
[00:36:57]  Well that is what worries me, yes.
[00:36:59]  I don't know what she's capable of because I don't even think she would remember thereafter.
[00:37:05]  So I don't know what she is capable of.
[00:37:08]  But if somebody threatens to kill you on several occasions, just because they may have personality disorders doesn't mean that they won't actually try and do it.
[00:37:17]  You think she might or is capable of that?
[00:37:20]  Well I seem to have been her major obsession over all these years because it's lasted the longest with me.
[00:37:28]  So I could quite see, depending on how you looked at things, that she maybe sees me as some sort of enemy and that maybe feels compelled to do something to harm me further.
[00:37:38]  Do you have a message for her if she's watching this?
[00:37:41]  Well I think my message would be I think you need to get some help.
[00:37:45]  I think you need to get psychiatric help as soon as possible and I think you need to get off Facebook and stop sending emails and so on to people because you're doing yourself no favours if you are going to sue Netflix.
[00:37:58]  Laura Ray, thank you very much.
[00:38:00]  Thank you.