A WINCHESTER barrister and his lawyer wife are facing jail for hounding a woman accused of giving them herpes.

Property lawyer Katherine Simpson branded the then-pregnant woman a “Southampton chav” after her affair with husband Jonathan.

The couple, of Clifton Terrace, Winchester, sent lurid letters to the woman’s family and former partner despite police warnings, a court heard.

Jurors at Southwark Crown Court yesterday convicted the Simpsons of stalking involving serious alarm or distress.

Mrs Simpson, 49, was said to have made repeated foul-mouthed phone calls to the woman she blamed for spreading herpes, while Mr Simpson broke his restraining order with flowers and messages.

The barrister told the court: “I felt like a drug addict, like a crack addict I had to keep going back for more.”

The 18-month affair started after a chance meeting in Southampton’s Apple Store which ended with Mr Simpson and the woman exchanging email addresses.

Two weeks later they went on their first date and kissed, signalling what Mr Simpson described as the “beginning of a slippery slope”.

“All I said throughout the first tranche of the relationship with [the other woman] in so far as my relationship was concerned was that it was perfect but for the fact that I had lost the sexual relationship with my wife,” he said.

He sobbed as he added: “I never lost my love for Katie, I just couldn’t make it happen in that department.”

Mrs Simpson described the mistress as a “chavvy woman from Southampton with fake boobs” and labelled her boyfriend a “thug” who should be kept in a cage.

The affair ended in autumn 2014 but Mr Simpson continued to make contact, the court heard.

Letters were sent to the woman’s brother, sister-in-law and the father of her child which included ‘intimate’ information about the woman and her affair, jurors were told.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she felt “degraded, threatened that I can’t live in my home when I want to.”

She said: “Every day I felt panic and dread when I woke up, every night I went to sleep thinking and I have nightmares thinking what’s going to happen next?”

The couple claimed they sent the letters for a “fact-finding mission” to try and get the restraining order removed.

Mr Simpson was cleared of acting in breach of a restraining order.

The pair will be sentenced on a date to be fixed.