A 19-year-old college student has been sentenced after stalking two staff members at his college and creating disturbing AI deepfakes based on them.
Ethan Fenwick, admitted to stalking two employees at Petroc College, Tiverton, both in person and through online accounts.
The court heard the victims were left deeply distressed due to his actions.
Fenwick appeared at Exeter Crown Court on Tuesday 13th January, after pleading guilty to two counts of stalking which caused serious alarm or distress in September.
He received a three-year community order, during which he must complete 150 hours of unpaid work and undergo a rehabilitation programme.
In addition, the court issued lifetime restraining orders and a sexual harm prevention order to protect the victims.
The first stalking incident occurred in July 2024 when Ethan Fenwick, who was 17-years-old at the time, stopped a female staff member in a corridor and asked her to prom. She declined and told him it was inappropriate.
When he turned 18 later that year, he asked the same woman on a date and she refused once more. He was then caught taking a photo of her without her knowledge and later sent her a social media friend request.
The college told Fenwick not to contact her again, but by November 2024, she began receiving suspicious Instagram friend requests from new accounts.
The biography of one account detailed planning to kidnap the victims to “make them mine”. The other account stated the person behind the account wanted to “pin her against a wall to use her body”.
Police traced these accounts back to Ethan Fenwick, arresting him and seizing several digital devices from his home.
They then found records from Petroc College, Tiverton, which reported that Fenwick had previously made racist and misogynistic comments. It was also told that he had been withdrawn from a different school and a youth centre as a result of an “unhealthy obsession” with both a teacher and a youth worker.
Other staff members from the college told police about other inappropriate behaviour, including Fenwick repositioning his chair to be uncomfortably close to one of the victims and showing her “graphic and violent and animé videos”.
There were also multiple reports of Fenwick filming the victims, and investigations uncovered that Fenwick had secretly taken photos and videos of staff and other students. Digital forensic analysis revealed thousands of images and recordings, many of which had been altered or collaged with pictures taken from social media.
In extreme cases, the head of one victim was placed next to sexually explicit content.
Additionally, officers found recordings of the victims’ voices that Fenwick had captured without their consent. He uses this material to generate AI-based deepfake personas, complete with a chat function, allowing him to interact virtually with these versions of the victims.
Fenwick’s behaviour was described by Detective Constable Andrew Stacey as intended to “unsettle and ultimately terrify his victims.”
The judge, Laura Collier, noted that the student had a longstanding autism diagnosis, with a psychological assessment concluding that he had limited awareness of what constitutes “normative and permitted social behaviour.”
She added that Fenwick was unlikely to “cope well in a custodial environment”, and decided that a lengthy community order was the most appropriate sentence.
One victim said she was left feeling “suicidal” as a result of what happened, while the other was prescribed medication for anxiety and had to take time off work.
The judge told Fenwick: “Your behaviour has deeply affected the lives of two women during the course of their work.
Women are entitled to go to work and feel safe and respected. No one has the right to take that from them.”
DC Andrew Stacey also said: “Ethan Fenwick’s victims – who were simply trying to do their jobs – were left distressed and concerned by his behaviour which was designed to unsettle and ultimately terrify them.
This investigation was highly digitally focused and employed a number of tactics to uncover a huge collection of images, videos and other digital evidence which were secretly captured, collaged and edited without the knowledge of the subjects.
Fenwick used AI and other advanced software to manipulate the contents of his collections in a hugely concerning manner – including in a sexual way.
We hope his victims can feel some closure and safeguarding from the sentencing and can now move forward with their lives.”
Petroc College has now merged with Exeter College to become North Devon College, which is part of the Exeter and North Devon Colleges Group.
A spokesperson for North Devon College (previously Petroc College) said: “This case occurred before the formation of the Exeter and North Devon Colleges (ENDC) Group, and we cannot comment on individual cases relating to students or staff. Safeguarding is paramount to us, and the safety and well-being of our students and staff underpins everything we do”.
If you have been affected by the content of this article, you can contact the Samaritans at any time by calling 116 123. Alternatively, you can contact Shout, a 24/7 text messaging service, by texting the word “Shout” to 85258.
Featured image via Canva
