A FARMER is fleeing her remote hillside home because a neighbour who exposed himself to her almost every day for nine years has won a court battle to return to his cottage - less than 200 yards from her property.

Ex-police constable Mandy Dunford, 54, was driven to despair by renowned military historian Kenneth Ward, 67, who followed her around her smallholding dressed only in his socks and boots for up to eight hours a day.

He would regularly perform sex acts in full view of Miss Dunford - who feared she would be raped.

He and his brother also left piles of maggot-infested animal carcasses outside her home at Chop Gate, near Stokesley, North Yorkshire, while the gun fanatic would stand on "sentry duty" in army fatigues and shouldering a rifle outside her window for hours on end.

Despite numerous complaints to police, Miss Dunford and friend Wendy Coulthard, 54, also a former cop, eventually filmed the bachelor's extreme behaviour with a hidden camera.

When officers eventually raided Ward's house they found a loaded Luger pistol under his pillow together with a vast collection of machine guns, grenades, mortars and ammunition.

When he was jailed for five years in 2011, Miss Dunford finally thought her ordeal was over as he was also subject to a restraining order - preventing him being within 200 metres of her.

As his cottage was only 176 metres from her home, this effectively meant he could not return.

However, she has now learnt that he has succeeded in varying that order, allowing him to approach right up to her farm boundary.

She told The Northern Echo her story and said: "I will be forced to abandon my home and my life just so he can return home, I can't see the justice in that."

MANDY Dunford refused to be driven out. For years she showed astonishing resolve to resist Kenneth Ward's "merciless" attempt to make her quit her modest nine acre farm where she keeps livestock.

The bearded bachelor was hell bent on driving the 54-year-old ex police constable from her home - situated less than 200 yards from his own ramshackle cottage - with his extreme behaviour.

He would follow her around her smallholding exposing himself nearly every day for nine years as well as performing sex acts in front of her - but he was never arrested despite being reported several times.

She felt like a prisoner in her own home.

In the end, Miss Dunford and friend Wendy Coulthard, 54, another retired cop, used their policing skills to trap Ward using hidden camera footage - which showed Ward repeating his weird ritual daily as the seasons change - even standing half naked in deep snow during one of the hardest winters on record.

Eventually, faced with their evidence, the police officers who had previously ignored her had no option but to act and raided Ward's dilapidated Appletree Cottage at Chop Gate in the Bilsdale Valley, which sits in a remote corner of the North York Moors National Park.

As the eccentric military expert - who ran a museum from his home - was arrested a huge cache of bombs and live weaponry was discovered, including a loaded Luger pistol under his pillow and an aircraft cockpit with functioning loaded guns.

RAF bomb squad officers were brought in to carry out controlled explosions on the moorland above their isolated homes.

When Ward was jailed for five years at Teesside Crown Court, Ms Dunford thought her harrowing ordeal, which stretched from 2002 to 2011, was over.

But he has now been released and she has discovered to her horror that he is free to return to Appletree Cottage - which shares a lane with her own Studstyle Farm - after his original restraining order was changed.

In desperation she is preparing to leave the smallholding, which she has poured her entire life savings into, and will move into a semi-derelict home at a secret moorland location rather than face him again.

Miss Dunford said: "I feel yet again that the offender has been given more rights than the victim. My punishment for his crimes has been far worse than anything he has ever faced - I'm losing my home so that he can return to his."

She added: "It was my dream to have my own smallholding when I left the force and the farm was perfect, I expected to live here for the rest of my life with my animals around me.

"At first Kenneth Ward and his brother Brian were friendly towards me but that changed as I started to do up the farm, which was in a pretty poor state when I bought it. I put a gate on the lane to my land, which also runs to their cottage and after that everything changed.

"The gate seemed to enrage them and they would swing and bounce on it. They even covered it in hundreds of stickers from the bananas Brian used to eat every day, which I thought was weird but it was nothing compared to what came afterwards.

"Brian was a pest controller and started dumping animal carcasses outside my house. They were crawling with maggots and the only way I could dispose of them was to put them in a bag and carry them up onto the moor to dump them in a remote place.

"Sometimes by the time I'd got back down again there would be another pile in place of the first one.

"After Brian's death over 10 years ago, Kenneth's behaviour became more and more erratic. He first started exposing himself to me around 2002 and would peer in through my windows with his wild staring eyes.

"He'd run around the house at night shouting and tapping on the windows. When I was working during the day he'd come right up to me and follow me around wearing nothing but boots and socks.

"Sometimes he'd climb a ladder and expose himself over the wall of his cottage and once he confronted me on the lane and aimed a rifle at me. I turned and ran and heard five shots go off behind me, I was terrified.

"He had a favourite stone on the lane next to my house where he used to stand to watch me with his pants down and shirt pulled up. He'd stand there for hours and hours every day, terrorising me became the only focus of his life.

"I went to the police to report him but their response was hopeless."

She went four times to Stokesley police station but it only resulted in warnings for Ward, which, she claims, only made his behaviour worse.

She and Mrs Coulthard decided the only way to bring him to justice was by trapping him themselves and rigged up hidden cameras around the farm, taking the footage they collected over the course of months to North Yorkshire Police.

Ward was arrested and jailed after admitting 11 counts of exposure, three charges of possessing a prohibited firearm and seven other firearms offences.

At the hearing in December 2011 a Sexual Offences Prevention Order was made which prevented Ward from coming within 200 metres of Mandy. As his cottage is only 176 metres from her home it meant he would never be able to return.

However in a hearing held since the sentencing, that order was varied and a new boundary was drawn up that would allow Ward to approach her farm from all sides right up to its boundary.

She said: "It means he can follow me around with only the width of a wire fence between us. When I heard the order had been changed without my knowledge I was horrified and I knew my only option was to pack up and leave. 

"I will be forced to abandon my home and my life just so that he can return home, I can't see the justice in that and I want to know why the rights of a man who tortured me for so long are more important than mine."

Five North Yorkshire police officers who failed to respond effectively to her original reports were criticised in an internal disciplinary enquiry which concluded they failed to meet "appropriate investigatory standards."

The report said: "It must serve as a reminder to North Yorkshire Police to periodically review how officers carry out their investigations and how North Yorkshire Police expects managers to supervise their staff."