Mother jailed after terror campaign

The mother of a disruptive schoolboy who almost sparked a teachers' strike was jailed for three years yesterday after waging a campaign of terror against a former housing official.

Rita Wilding, 35, subjected 53-year-old Gerald Bunting to a stream of abuse when he appeared on a Kilroy television programme last year, which dealt with violent women. Nottingham Crown Court heard that the campaign culminated with her turning up at Mr Bunting's home in Nottingham and saying, "We've come to burn you", before he was sprayed with what he thought was petrol, but which was, in fact, lemonade. Before that, Wilding made 72 threatening telephone calls to the retired official who had been left 80 per cent disabled after she pushed him down a flight of stairs in 1992. At the time of the latest incident, teachers at Glaisdale Comprehensive School in Nottingham were refusing to teach her son Richard, then 13, because of his alleged violence and bullying.