A PRISON officer was plagued with chilling hate mail after a North Yorkshire inmate got hold of her home address.

As well as using Emma Potter's details to send her terrifyingly graphic threats, Antonia Cooper, 21, spread the classified information around Low Newton remand centre, Durham.

She had managed to get hold of Mrs Potter's details through proceedings relating to her attacking the 26-year-old.

On five separate occasions, between July last year and March this year, she sent sinister letters, some sexually explicit, franked by the prison and on prison notepaper.

One threatened to cut her up and force her husband to watch. She also said she would torch her home in Silksworth, Sunderland, knowing that Mrs Potter was aware of her previous conviction for arson.

The bombardment continued even after Cooper was released from the jail, but she

was caught after a piece of writing paper containing Mrs Potter's address with a razor blade attached to it was found in her home.

At Newcastle Crown Court yesterday Cooper, of Abbots Road, Selby, pleaded guilty to putting a person in fear of violence by harassment and making a threat to kill.

None of the letters were read out in court, but prosecutor Jane Waugh said they were of a "particularly vile nature".

Sentence was adjourned for the preparation or reports, and Judge Guy Whitburn said: "This is a very disturbing case indeed, very disturbing".

Mrs Potter, who has been with the Prison Service for five years, did not wish to comment after the hearing, but her parents, David and Linda, spoke of the torment which forced their daughter to leave the home she loved.

Mr Potter, 52, of Barnes, Sunderland, said: "She had a beautiful three-bedroomed house which she loved.

"She had spent a fortune getting it exactly how she wanted it, it was her home. She was just minutes away from us and we could pop round and visit at any time.

"She is now living in rented accommodation that she can't call her own. She couldn't have stayed at the old house, she was just too terrified.

"The letters contained graphic designs of what she was going to do to Emma.

"They were so bad she wouldn't even show us them, but she said one actually threatened to cut her up and make her husband watch.

"She had to come and live with us for a while and took a voluntary six-

month transfer to a prison in London to get away from it. It was sickening to actually see her in court.

"Thankfully, Emma is now back at work at Low Newton, but I don't know if she will ever get over this."

Updated: 15:27 Wednesday, June 04, 2003