A TWISTED mum managed to con cops police into thinking her ex was a monster who threatened her with a gun, putting him through four years of hell.
Kirsty Barr’s lies – including that he threw her down stairs, attacked her and held a gun to her head – landed the 26-year-old father of her baby daughter in prison twice and he was arrested by armed police at gunpoint.
But it eventually unravelled – not before the man lost almost everything and was driven to wanting to take his own life – and she was branded by a judge as ‘the real monster here’.
Before she was jailed for three years and nine months, after admitting perverting the course of justice between June 4 and December 12, 2018, Hull Crown Court heard in the victim’s own words how she had “set out to destroy his life”
He was left so desperate that he wanted the police to shoot him dead so that his torture and misery would end – and he was forced to flee to Southampton so that he could prove that he was not in Hull, where they had both lived at the time, and could not be accused of terrorising Barr.
Reading out a victim statement to the court. He said: “Kirsty Barr set out to destroy my life.”
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She had “portrayed me as a monster” during interviews for stories in newspapers and he was arrested 10 times in one month, sometimes in front of family, including his mother, and in the street, in pubs and clubs and in front of friends as well as strangers.
He said: “I lost my health. I could not eat or sleep. I worried what would come next and still have flashbacks.”
This included when he heard sirens or the sound of a helicopter nearby because he worried that the police were coming to arrest him.
The police had brought in a helicopter when armed police were sent to his home in the early hours after false allegations by Barr that he had a knife and a gun with him during a supposed violent confrontation with her.
The picture that Barr, 24, formerly of Hull but recently of St Chad’s Way, Barton upon Humber, painted of him gave him no voice, he said.
He started to take random selfies of himself “everywhere” so that he could prove where he was in case she made accusations against him.
He explained: “I was in prison for offences that I had not committed. This took a terrible toll on my mental health.”
He wanted the ordeal to stop and “wanted to kill” himself.
The only thing standing before him to stop him doing this was his “beautiful daughter”.
While he was wrongly in prison, he missed her birthday for the only time.
It was the “lowest point of my life,” he said. “I didn’t think I would survive.”
He said that he was left “terrified” at about 2am when a helicopter flew overhead at his home and armed police arrived. He had to put his hands behind his head.
He spent three days on remand on suicide watch. He was released on a tag and hoped that Barr’s lies would be uncovered.
He went to Southampton to escape the risk of more lies about his behaviour and the “monster” that he was being painted as.
The man lost his job and had to stop teaching children as a football coach, a role that he loved. He now had his family back and a new job that he loved.
The harm that Barr caused to him lasted for more than four years and almost all of his daughter’s life. He had lived on handouts from family and friends. He was living with his grandmother and had a new girlfriend.
He said that he was angry that a police force that was supposedly “there to serve and protect the victim had failed the victim” but the police had “rectified that” in the end.
The man’s mother said in a statement that Barr had constantly sent the police to her house in the middle of the night to lock up her son, banging on the door to arrest him wrongly.
Judge Mark Bury said: “It’s always a serious offence but this one is a particularly serious example of its kind. He lost his job, he lost contact with his daughter, his mental health began to deteriorate.
“Worse was to come. He got home, having been in the company of other people all night. He was in the process of running a bath when armed police came to his door. It was two in the morning. He was arrested at gunpoint. His mother and 11-year-old brother witnessed this.
“Such was his mental fragility that he invited the armed police to shoot him. He was, had he played his cards badly down, at risk of being seriously injured or killed.”
Judge Bury said that Barr had portrayed her ex-boyfriend as a monster in newspaper articles. “It wasn’t until January 2019 that the police began to work out that the real monster here was you,” said Judge Bury. “This is a desperately serious offence of its type.”
The ex-boyfriend could have been charged with aggravated burglary or possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, both of which carried a possible sentence of life imprisonment.
He said: “Your conduct here was very persistent.
“The amount of police time that has been taken up and public resources is significant. The firearm deployment cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and that’s just a part of it.
“There are huge consequences of severity here. He nearly lost everything. He lost his employment, he lost his child, he lost his liberty and he wasn’t far off taking his own life. Thankfully, after a long time, he has begun to put his life on track.
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“He has got a job now. He is now in another relationship. His life eventually is getting back on track but it’s not just him. His mother has been traumatised by all this.”
An appeal against the original conviction by District Judge Rutherford was successful at Hull Crown Court in January 2020 and it was not opposed by the prosecution.
