Doc Martin actress faces £230k court bill after falsely accusing neighbour of having sex with a PIG
Sharon Hamilton, 54, got her 73-year-old neighbour Anton Barkhuysen arrested after the outrageous lie
A TV actress was facing a £230,000 court bill last night after falsely accusing her neighbour of having sex with a pig.
Sharon Hamilton, 54, got her 73-year-old neighbour Anton Barkhuysen arrested by claiming she saw him having sex with an animal he lured into his clutches with doughnuts.
But she was facing financial ruin last night after a High Court judge ruled she had been telling porkies.
Her vile lie led to a humiliating police probe in which eight police officers raided the innocent pensioner’s house before he was subjected to intimate examinations and sample tests.
The married former parish councillor was quizzed about his sex life and endured months of public ridicule on police bail in his close-knit home village of Tregolls, in Stithians, Cornwall.
Hamilton - who has had bit parts in ITV’s Doc Martin - was accused of using her acting skills to talk police into nicking Mr Barkhuysen on New Year’s Day, 2013.
But he was completely exonerated after Hamilton’s story was ruled to be “entirely false” when he sued her for false imprisonment, harassment and slander in London’s High Court.
And she now faces a mammoth bill after Mr Barkhuysen was awarded £32,080 damages by Mr Justice Warby with additional legal costs estimated at £200,000.
The judge said: “Mrs Hamilton made a false, entirely unfounded, and malicious accusation.
“That accusation set in train the actions of the police that followed: his arrest and detention, the seizure of his property, the intimate sampling and other steps.
“She procured a criminal investigation of the claimant lasting several months.”
The court heard the neighbours, who live close to each other in the tiny hamlet of Tregolls, had been at each other’s throats for eight years over a land dispute.
Mr Barkhuysen objected to Hamilton fencing off part of the adjoining Tregolls Common, where she keeps pigs.
She claimed the fence has been in place since long before she even moved there and as the owner of the adjoining farm had grazing rights over the common.
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The row escalated with Mrs Hamilton’s New Year’s Day claim in 2013 that she had stumbled upon Mr Barkhuysen having sex with one of her pigs.
She claimed he had enticed the animal with doughnuts and hurried away in shame when he realised he had been spotted.
Mr Barkhuysen told yesterday how his feud with his neighbour escalated into a “war of terror”.
He said: “It has been five years of hell dealing with this woman.
“Only a small proportion came out in court - there were so many other things.
“Because she could not do what she wanted she resorted to a war of terror against myself, my household and my family.
“This resulted in harassment, defamation to various third parties and the most vile and false sexual allegations concerning an animal.
“That was the most serious. She had me arrested for having sexual intercourse with a pig, which was a complete pack of lies.
“She is an actress who has had bit parts in Doc Martin and I think she used her acting skills to fool the police.
“A long time before the pig incident I was warning the police about this woman making false allegations against me.
“Despite this, they sent eight officers to my house, seized various items of my property including my legal firearms, my clothes, my computers, and put me in the cells in Camborne.
I think she used her acting skills to fool the police
“I was then on bail for three months for the pig allegation - the police simply took her word at face value.
“The pig allegation is disgusting. I am well known in the village and it is horrifying to think about what people thought.
Hamilton slammed her door shut and said: “”I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk to you” when asked to comment at her remote farmhouse.