Canadian actress jailed for stalking Alec Baldwin

NEW YORK CITY: A New York judge on Thursday found a Canadian actress guilty of stalking and harassing US movie and television star Alec Baldwin, sentencing her to seven months in jail.
Genevieve Sabourin, 41, engaged in a “relentless and escalating campaign of threats” that “served to harass, annoy and alarm Mr.Baldwin” and “terrorized his wife,” Judge Thomas Mandelbaum said.
He found her guilty on five counts and sentenced her to 210 days in jail, including 30 days for contempt he handed down Wednesday after she repeatedly interrupted and heckled proceedings in court.
Mandelbaum ordered her to “stay completely away from Alec Baldwin and Hilaria Baldwin” for the next five years.
Sabourin, who denied the charges and claimed to want only closure after an affair with Baldwin, told the court one last time that she had “done nothing wrong” but received no leniency.
She sat subdued as the sentence was read out. Looking pale and withdrawn, her composure after a night in jail for contempt was in stark contrast to her outbursts earlier in the trial.
Baldwin, who took the stand on Tuesday, denied having sex with her and accused her of bombarding him with hundreds of unwanted messages and of sending “vile” Twitter messages to his wife.
Sabourin showed an “utter lack of respect for the law” and a basic unwillingness to accept that the rules of civil society applied to her as well as to everyone else, Mandelbaum concluded Wednesday.
Her lawyer Todd Spodek said that, while her sentence was heavier than expected, she would only serve 180 days and be let out early for good behavior.
“It is absolutely heavier than I expected, however I believe the judge sentenced her not only for the crimes charged but her conduct throughout the trial,” he told AFP.
Baldwin’s lawyer summed up by calling her “willful and volatile” and a “delusional” woman who subjected the A-list star to a “nightmarish” experience and who had terrified Hilaria Baldwin.
On Wednesday, a sobbing Sabourin testified for three hours in the criminal court, speaking of how she dreamt of marriage and children with Baldwin after an alleged night of passion in 2010.
“This guy, you know, he knows what to say. He makes millions of dollars charming women on the screen. He’s a professional charmer, the best in the world,” she told the court.
“Am I naive or stupid? I don’t know. You can laugh at me as much as you want but I believed him.”
She admitted to sending him e-mails, calling him up and turning up uninvited at his Long Island home, his Manhattan apartment and a public event where he was appearing after a film screening.
While Baldwin admitted having dinner with her in New York in February 2010 he said it purely as a favor to discuss her career.
Sabourin claimed they went back to her plush New York hotel where they “made love” but that while she fell in love, Baldwin disappeared the next day, leaving her hurt and confused.
At first confident there must have been a misunderstanding, she said they stayed in phone and e-mail touch and had phone sex.
“I gave him my heart, my body and soul. I loved him and I care for him very much,” she told the court.
Then he started seeing Hilaria. Sabourin turned up unannounced three times, twice at their home and once at a film event from which she was ejected, but she denied being threatening.
“I am annoying. But I am not aggressive,” she said.
But even on the witness stand her interruptions and protestations earned her frequent rebukes from the judge.
On Tuesday, she repeatedly heckled Baldwin and his wife, telling the actor that he was a liar and Hilaria that she would go to hell.
Baldwin claims he never saw Sabourin after their dinner until she turned up uninvited at his Long Island home on March 31, 2012, the afternoon that he got engaged to Hilaria.