A RESPECTED tutor and author is facing prison after admitting a campaign of stalking and harassment against a Hampshire charity shop worker which left her fearing for her life.

“Obsessed” Graham Steed, 68, admitted stalking his victim for nearly two years, during which time he hired a private investigator to follow and take photos of her and a partner, and tried to install covert cameras in a neighbour’s garden.

Steed also visited the woman on numerous occasions at the charity shop in Bishop’s Waltham where she worked, despite agreeing to stay away, and sent letters of complaint to her employer, which eventually resulted in her being asked to leave her job.

It has left her “always looking over her shoulder” and she now often goes without eating, a court heard.

Magistrates heard how Steed, of Holybourne Road, Romsey, had been a tutor for the woman's daughter, and after his services were no longer needed, he had remained a friend of the family.

Prosecutor David Foster told magistrates that after a while the victim felt the relationship had crossed a line and asked him to stop contacting her, which he agreed to.

However, he continued to visit her at the charity shop and on one occasion asked her for a selfie, which she felt pressured to take, that he later sent to her husband.

He also sent photos taken by the private investigator of her with her partner, and on one occasion she spotted Steed “commando crawling towards the car” she was in.

In a victim impact statement she said: “It was extremely distressing, he became obsessed with me. Whenever I’m out and about, I’m always looking over my shoulder. I’m in fear of my life.”

Mr Foster added that she now regularly has to check the locks on her windows and doors, has her security light turned on constantly and often goes without eating.

Magistrates in Basingstoke have now sent the case to Winchester Crown Court, where Steed will be sentenced for stalking involving serious harm/distress.

Steed had a 20-year career in the Merchant Navy, serving aboard tankers and container ships in the Atlantic, before spending nine years as a social worker and more than a decade teaching maths and English in Southampton.

According to his website he has prepared children in maths, English and Latin for grammar and public school entry, including Winchester and Eton, charging from £20 an hour. Steed’s site bills him as the “tutor of choice” for young people, while for adults he is described as “the teacher they wish they could have had as a child”.

In 2014 he published his first work of fiction, Cruso the Navigator, which followed his earlier publication the Little Book of Maths.