A COUPLE have begged "leave us alone" after being victims of a twelve-year campaign of hateful graffiti and harassment, including deaths threats to their German Shepherd.

Jeff and Lin Bagley, of Sayers Common, find new and unpleasant graffiti about them scrawled all over the village almost every week when they walk their six-year old Alsatian, Ted.

Abusive grafitti including “Die Ted”, “We know where you live Bagley scum” and references to the death of Lin’s parents - as well as defamatory sexual remarks about the couple - have been written in marker pen and chalk on fence posts, bus shelters, walls and lifebelt housings in the sleepy village since 2004.

Now the police have issued an appeal for information, saying the graffiti is unprovoked and has caused great distress, and the couple are asking villagers to join them in reporting the vandalism.

Jeff, 71, and Lin 59, said the harassment began in 2004 and escalated a year later, when they found contents of a dog waste bin had been thrown into their garden.

After the same thing happened repeatedly Jeff and Lin spent more than £2,000 installing CCTV cameras and security measures around their home.

Lin said: “I find it very intimidating, I think to myself ‘who’s watching me?’.

“I rarely walk on my own without Teddy, and it’s got so that I put him in the car and drive out of the village just to walk the dog.

“I’ve had lights shined into my room upstairs when I’m trying to sleep.

“And they’ve tried to hurt my dogs as well, we’ve had bones thrown into the garden which they could choke on, but my dogs are very well trained.”

The couple praised the speed at which Hurstpierpoint parish and Burgess Hill town councils have cleaned up the graffiti once notified, but said that it was making their lives a misery.

Jeff said: “We’d move if we could but this house is shared ownership and it’s complicated.”

Neighbour Geoff Pelling said: “Jeff and Lin are lovely, they help people out with problems. They don’t deserve this, nobody, does. And for the police to let this go on and on is unacceptable.”

Sussex Police encourage anyone with information to email 101@sussex.pnn.police.uk or call 101, quoting serial 1191 of 20/02.