A wildlife volunteer's life was turned into a year-long nightmare of fear and harassment after his neighbour set fire to his beloved Land Rover, with what he describes as catastrophic police failures leaving him feeling unprotected and forced to take drastic measures for his own safety.
From Pleasant Chat to Petrol Bombs: The Start of a Nightmare
For two years, Graham Lee, 56, and author Susan Lupton, 63, lived near each other in the idyllic coastal village of Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight without exchanging a word. Their first conversation in June 2024 seemed innocuous, centring on the badgers Graham cared for on a driveway he owned. Graham, a dedicated volunteer with the Badgers Trust for 16 years, walked away from the chat feeling optimistic, believing Lupton was "nice and pleasant" about the animals.
His perception shattered just two weeks later. On the morning of June 20, 2024, after returning from a dentist appointment, a neighbour frantically alerted him that his Land Rover Freelander was ablaze. Rushing to the scene, Graham found a scene of carnage: flames reaching twenty feet high, his fence and a Japanese Maple tree destroyed, and fire threatening a severely disabled neighbour's home.
"My stomach just dropped and my legs went like jelly," Graham exclusively told the Daily Mail. He confronted Lupton, who was standing in the road. "I immediately said to her, 'You did this. Why do you do this?'" He recalls her first retort was "prove it", before she alleged, "Your badgers kill cats", and ran inside.
A Catalogue of Failures: Police Inaction and Living in Fear
Lupton immediately admitted guilt to arresting officers, with discarded matches on her patio. She revealed she had used matches to light a tray of white spirit placed under the car, a method she claimed a "fireman friend" had suggested. It later emerged she lives with bipolar disorder and was experiencing a manic episode at the time. She was sectioned after her arrest.
However, Graham's ordeal was only beginning. Despite assurances she was in hospital and unfit to plead, he returned home to chillingly find Lupton watching him from her window. She had been bailed back to the address opposite the scene of her crime. Graham claims she owned two other properties on the island, yet authorities cited her "specific needs" in allowing her to return.
What followed was a near year-long campaign of harassment that left Graham petrified. He says Lupton constantly watched him, using a Google Nest camera alerting her to his movements. She was caught on his security footage standing at the end of his driveway, smoking and staring. She allegedly parked her car to block his garage and in October falsely claimed to police he tried to run her over.
Between June and October 2024, Lupton called police six times with harassment claims. On one occasion, four officers turned up at the home of Graham's 85-year-old father-in-law looking for him. The psychological toll was immense. "It made me very afraid, and very stressed," Graham said. "I was scared, afraid to go down there because of her being there and not knowing what she's going to do."
Taking Protection Into His Own Hands
Feeling utterly failed by the system, Graham felt compelled to take extraordinary steps to protect himself and his family. "Because the police were failing us and the CPS was doing nothing, we had to buy weapons," he stated. He installed fire extinguishers in every room, hid knives throughout the house, and kept a tactical crossbow by the bed.
"The police had let us down," Graham explained. "Harsh words were not going to get rid of this woman if she came onto our property at night." The constant vigilance was exhausting, affecting even simple acts like cooking with the back door open in summer, fearing she would walk in.
The arson itself had severe consequences. Graham battled the blaze for 15 minutes before firefighters arrived, an act he believes saved his neighbour's life but for which he was later denied criminal injuries compensation for "putting himself at risk". He suffered smoke inhalation, a burn on his arm, and now uses a CPAP machine to aid his breathing. The fire caused over £20,000 of damage, completely gutting the 4x4 he had bought specifically to transport his seriously ill, widowed mother from hospital.
Apologies and a Suspended Sentence
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary eventually apologised to Graham, admitting in a January letter seen by the Mail that the service provided was "not acceptable". They blamed "admin errors" and poor communication for his harassment allegations being initially "overlooked".
Despite police later submitting evidence for a stalking charge, the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was not a "realistic prospect of conviction", citing that allegations from both parties were "finely balanced".
At sentencing, Judge James Newton-Price said Graham and his wife had suffered a "terrifying experience". He told Lupton she had developed a "fixation" and became "irrationally obsessed" with Graham, disliking him attracting badgers and wrongly believing they killed a cat. Susan Lupton admitted two counts of arson. She was handed a two-year suspended sentence, ordered to pay £1,000 costs and £7,835 compensation, given a restraining order, and banned from Freshwater village indefinitely.
Today, Graham's life is slowly returning to normal. The crossbow is gone, his mother is out of hospital, and he has since married, though the couple had to postpone their wedding last year due to the stress. But the trauma lingers. He still, at times, checks over his shoulder, a lasting reminder of the year his peaceful island life was set ablaze by a neighbour's fury and a system he says left him to fend for himself.
