The leading scientist behind the Covid testing lab feared for her safety following an ‘onslaught’ of ‘threatening and intimidating’ emails and social media posts, a court heard.

Anti-vaccine campaigner Courtenay Heading is standing trial in the summary court accused of stalking Dr Rachel Glover.

Mr Heading sent hundreds of emails and Tweets accusing Dr Glover of conducting a Covid PCR test fraud for financial gain, being responsible for vaccine injuries and being complicit in the deaths of residents at the Abbotswood nursing home during the pandemic.

Some posts called for her to be subject to a criminal investigation and face, alongside others, a ‘New Nuremburg’ for alleged crimes, a reference to the trial of leading Nazis after the Second World War.

Taking the stand, Dr Glover read out extracts from some of the messages that were either sent directly to her or into which she was copied, a number of which had been sent while she was at home with her newborn baby.

‘It was just an onslaught,’ she said. ‘There was no escape for it.’

Tweets accused her of being a ‘PCR test faker’ and being the ‘ultimate Covid conner’ and a member of the ‘Manx dirty dozen’ who should be charged with genocide.

But it was one tweet sent on March 27 last year that brought matters to a head in which Mr Heading said that ‘Jurby jail was too good for Dr Rachel Glover’.

‘This was the tweet which really shook me in all honesty,’ she told High Bailiff James Brooks. ‘Is he going to turn up on the doorstep with a kitchen knife? What is he capable of? I was at home with a very young baby. How can that possibly not make me upset and afraid?’

Dr Glover said she felt the defendant had been trying to ‘rally pitchforks at dawn’. ‘I felt very targeted,’ she said.

As a result, she increased security at her home, making sure she locked the door when she got in and changed her route to her office to avoid the ‘Justice for the Jabbed’ vigils being held by Mr Heading on the Fort North roundabout close to her workplace. She said she now avoids going into Ramsey to avoid coming face to face with the defendant.

Dr Glover played a key role in the island’s pandemic response after volunteering her services to set up a Covid testing centre.

She told the summary court that the emails began in late 2017 with claims about the HPV vaccine, but then significantly escalated during the Covid pandemic.

The emails stopped for a couple of weeks after Dr Glover contacted the police who warned Mr Heading that the large volume of unsolicited correspondence was causing her concern. But then the defendant increasingly turned to Twitter to post his accusations.

Dr Glover stressed she had nothing to do with the island’s vaccination programme. She confirmed that she had had the Covid jab ‘because I’m immuno-suppressed and if I had caught Covid I would have died’.

Mr Heading, 66, of Richmond Road, Ramsey, is charged with stalking under the Harassment Act, which he denies.

He represented himself in court and asked to be referred to as ‘Courtenay’, saying at the outset: ‘I am here under distress, threat and coercion.’

Cross-examining, he asked Dr Glover: ‘If you saw a crime what would you do?’ She replied: ‘I would go to the police – which is what I did in your case.’

‘Do you think that much that I put in my Tweets is educational?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think any are educational,’ she replied, describing them instead as ‘threatening and intimidating’.

Dr Glover told the defendant: ‘While you are calm in court today your online posts are not so calm and measured and that can be quite frightening when you are the topic of them.’

The trial continues tomorrow (Tuesday).