Journalist Lydia Suffield, 29, has been spared jail after stalking former Tory chancellor George Osborne and his wife Thea Rogers12:24, 03 Jul 2026Updated 23:27, 03 Jul 2026A journalist who stalked former Tory chancellor George Osborne and his wife Thea Rogers has been spared jail.‌Lydia Suffield, 29, sent emails containing false allegations about the couple to their friends and family, reported them to social services and even sent gifts for their young children. Mr Osborne described the harassment - which prosecutors said involved dozens of emails to people in their circle - as "utterly debilitating".‌The freelance writer also made eight anonymous false referrals about the couple to children’s charity the NSPCC, resulting in the couple being investigated for drug abuse and neglect of their young children, Isleworth Crown Court heard.‌In his victim impact statement, Mr Osborne said: "No one who hasn’t been a victim of this kind of stalking and harassment can understand how utterly debilitating it is."Suffield used a number of anonymous email addresses to make the "hurtful allegations", the full details of which prosecutor Paul Jarvis KC did not refer to in court because of what he called "a real danger that the victims would suffer the harm that they hoped Ms Suffield’s guilty pleas would spare them from".‌Mr Osborne, who was the Conservative MP for Tatton in Cheshire for 16 years until 2017, described the stalking as a "campaign to ruin our lives", while Ms Rogers said the "malicious" stalking "completely ruined well over a year of my life".Suffield first made contact with associates of Mr Osborne, including Conservative peer Lord Daniel Finkelstein, via social media in 2020, the prosecutor said.Lord Finkelstein agreed to meet Suffield in person in April 2022 in an attempt to "stem the flurry" of messages, but she continued to bombard him with messages afterwards, most of which referenced Mr Osborne.‌From the summer of 2022, the stalking incidents escalated, with Suffield contacting Ms Rogers and people linked to the couple, including Ms Rogers’ mother, and making false allegations about Mr Osborne.Mitigating, Marie Spenwyn said the information Suffield sent to the couple and their friends was "available publicly", including on the cult newsletter Popbitch.‌The stalking culminated in Suffield sending gifts for the couple's children through Lord Finkelstein, circulating allegations to guests ahead of the couple’s wedding in June 2023 and making false reports to parliamentary authorities.Ms Rogers described the gifts as "creepy" and said she had considered cancelling the wedding. "My anxiety increased as it was clear she wasn’t just interested in me," she said in her victim impact statement, read to the court by Mr Jarvis.Referring to Suffield's actions in the run-up to his wedding, Mr Osborne, who was chancellor under David Cameron for six years until July 2016, said: "She went to great lengths under the cowardly cloak of anonymity to utterly ruin our day."‌Suffield, who the court heard has autism, dyspraxia and ADHD, was arrested in October 2023.Police seized her electronic devices and notebooks, which Mr Jarvis said "revealed the depth of her obsession with George Osborne". "The notebooks contained a wealth of personal information about the Osborne family," the prosecutor told the court."There was also fan fiction that Ms Suffield had written about Mr Osborne and one piece entitled 'Thea Rogers Hates Lydia Suffield'. Ms Suffield had even saved a copy of the Facebook profiles of Mr Osborne’s adult children."‌Suffield sent the messages between June 8, 2022, and July 5, 2023, and made the referrals to the NSPCC between March and June 2023.Suffield, from Liverpool, denied two counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress in breach of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. In May, she re-entered not guilty pleas to those charges but admitted two lesser offences of stalking. The more serious charges lie on file.‌Sentencing her to a 22-week custodial sentence, suspended for two years, Mrs Justice Cutts told her: "The offences you committed are so serious that I have come close to giving an immediate custodial sentence."Suffield confirmed she understood she would likely be sent to prison if she committed any further offence within two years.The judge said Suffield’s interest in Mr Osborne had initially stemmed from "her interest in journalism", but her continuing behaviour did not.Article continues below"By your repeated contact with the NSPCC, you were not trying to obtain a scoop," Mrs Justice Cutts said. "You were intending to disrupt, if not ruin, their lives as much as you could without revealing your identity."She described the stalking as "persistent, determined, well-planned and sophisticated", adding that it had caused "a great deal of distress over a protracted period."Suffield was also ordered to complete 30 days of rehabilitation activity, pay prosecution costs of £1,630 plus a victim surcharge, and was made subject to a restraining order banning contact with a list of people including Mr Osborne and Ms Rogers.