A YOUNG woman has described the ‘horrendous’ ordeal of being stalked by serial offender Ezra Garfield and the shock of being arrested herself after he made fabricated counter-allegations.
Mr Garfield, 25, from Trillick, was jailed for 19 months after pleading guilty to harassment and perverting the course of justice against Jodie Morrow, whom he had only briefly dated. He will also serve a further 19 months on supervised licence.
For Ms Morrow, however, the prison sentence does not erase what she says was a traumatic experience; one that included being held in a police cell for four hours while officers investigated false claims made against her.
Furthermore, it was not Mr Garfield’s first conviction.
In February 2022, under the name Riagain Grainger, he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years at Manchester Crown Court after admitting stalking a fellow student between 2018 and 2019. He was released in March 2023 after serving 13 months.
Ms Morrow connected with him during lockdown in March 2020, unaware of his past.
“We matched on Tinder during lockdown and I didn’t know he was on bail,” she said.
After months of online conversations, they met in person that summer, arranging dates in Enniskillen and Belfast, where she was living while studying at Ulster University.
“After our first date, I found him very likeable. There were no red flags. He just seemed like a normal, nice guy.”
But the connection was short-lived, and Ms Morrow cut contact in early September 2020 after Garfield confessed to her that he was on bail relating to the stalking charge in Manchester.
What followed, she said, was relentless.
She alleges Mr Garfield bombarded her with distressing messages in the months after she cut contact.
He had also enrolled at Ulster University, where she was studying, and moved into student accommodation close to where she was living.
Fearing for her safety, Ms Morrow made a formal complaint to police in September 2020.
“When I reported him, I made the PSNI aware of his confession,” she said.
“I was told they could not find any evidence that he was on bail.”
While under investigation, Mr Garfield made a counter-complaint, alleging Ms Morrow was harassing him.
He created a fake Instagram account in her name, cloning her profile and claiming she was using it to send him threatening messages. Ms Morrow was contacted by police and agreed to attend a voluntary interview on Saturday, December 19, 2020. She said, “I just wanted the harassment to stop. I had no interest in contacting him.”
However, the day before the scheduled interview, officers arrived at her student accommodation and arrested her. He had used a ‘fake call’ app to allege she was persistently phoning him, but refused to hand over his phone to the police to verify the calls.
“I had spent months compiling evidence and reporting it to the police in an attempt to stop the harassment, but I was arrested and put in a cell within days of him making a false complaint,” she said.
It wasn’t until after her arrest that the connection was made to the ongoing case in Manchester, an issue she believes stemmed from disjointed systems.
Whilst on probation for his stalking conviction, he changed his name from Riagain Grainger to Ezra Garfield. He then failed to show up to court for sentencing in Laganside Crown Court, resulting in a bench warrant being issued.
Earlier this month, sentencing Mr Garfield, Judge Gordon Kerr KC said the offences were serious and deliberate. The court heard he had sought to manipulate the system by making false allegations.
Describing his character, Ms Morrow called him ‘narcissistic and self-absorbed’.
“Self-interest is a really big part of it, almost a main character syndrome,” she said. “He thinks everyone else should be constantly focused on him. There’s zero respect for the women he’s targeting.
“Because he’s a film student, I sometimes feel he doesn’t view the women who have upset him as people. It’s like some twisted storyline he’s fixated on, and we’re merely characters he’s tormenting.”
Now, five years on, she said the aftermath has been worse than the harassment itself.
“Looking back, although the harassment was horrendous, it will never compare to the feeling of not being believed, or the lengthy legal process that followed,” she said.
“As a woman, to have so much evidence, so many people previously saying the same thing, and then the whole investigation turns against me, that’s scarier than anything else he did.
“It should have been so easy for me to get help, the case seemed so straight-forward to me.”
Ms Morrow said she felt compelled to speak out because his name change has provided some anonymity.
“I want to share my story because there was a lot of noise in England about it, where his first offence took place, and I want to connect the dots. This was all one person with a disturbing pattern of behaviour.” she said.
“People in places like Fermanagh and Tyrone, where he is from, should be aware of the full history and latest charges.”
“Knowing how quickly he moved from victim to victim in Manchester, I believe there could be more victims who haven’t come forward here. If reading this helps someone else come forward, then I’ve done my bit.”
