Guilty plea in court to forgery and criminal harassment charges
A young man rejected by a teenage girl he liked set up a Facebook page to harass her, a court has been told.
Cody Rae Allen, 19, pleaded guilty in the Gisborne District Court on Wednesday to forgery and criminal harassment.
The court was told that last June, Allen befriended a 17-year-old girl and they began texting, talking on the phone and chatting on the internet.
Allen asked the girl to become his girlfriend but she declined.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Tess Brownlie said he then contacted the teenage girl's friends and family and posted information on the internet, defaming her.
Speaking to the Herald last night, Allen said he felt "stink" about the incident and apologised for his actions.
But he said he became upset in the first place when the girl - whom he said he had never asked out, but he liked - had told him that she had been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
He later found that that was a lie.
"It was just emotions basically. If somebody told you something like they had a brain tumour and that kind of stuff, it really gets to you.
"And then finding out months and months later - after you've tried to do everything that you can for them - that it was a lie and that they lied to you, it really gets to you. You take it real personal," he said.
Allen set up a Facebook profile under the name of one of the teenage girl's friends and posted things such as, "I was so excited when I shot my first deer, that I wanted to have sex with it", in the hope the girl would turn to him for comfort.
He also used the fake profile to contact the girl's father and brother to say he [the fake profile] was having sex with her.
The court heard how he posted: "Love you babe, it's been ages since we had sex."
When he was contacted by the police, he admitted to the harassment and forging of the Facebook profile but believed it had been "a bit of a joke", the police prosecutor said.
Allen, who works as a lighting-pyro engineer for big shows and gigs for musicians such as Nesian Mystik, said his career was now in limbo.
He was due to be the lighting engineer for the Disney On Ice shows in Auckland and Christchurch next month, but will now have to cancel as he has to stay in Gisborne until he is sentenced in August.
He said he was sorry that his emotions "got out of hand" and wanted to apologise to the girl and her family.
"I'm just sorry to the max. It's just something that got out of hand, that shouldn't have happened in the first place."
