A COUNTY school teacher has told a court how her neighbours carried out a hate campaign against her and her family over a three-year period.

Catriona Henderson claims that her next-door neighbours David and Jacqueline Aston made scores of “malicious” complaints against her and partner Stuart McMorris to the local authority, the police and the NSPCC.

Ms Henderson, 45, told Edinburgh Sheriff Court that Jacqueline Aston had also contacted her profession’s governing body, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), on two occasions claiming she was an “unfit mother” in April 2020.

The teacher said that emails had been sent alleging she had locked one of her children out in the cold without adequate clothing and that she and her partner regularly used drugs including laughing gas and crystal meth.

Previously, the trial heard that it had been agreed between the prosecution and the defence that the two complaints to the GTCS had come from “an individual who identified themselves as Jacqueline Aston from Blackadder Crescent, North Berwick”.

READ MORE: Couple's alleged behaviour towards neighbours

Ms Henderson made the claims while giving evidence against neighbours David, 55, and Jacqueline Aston, 57, who are alleged to have carried out a hate campaign against her family on Blackadder Crescent, Ferrygate, North Berwick.

The Astons are standing trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court accused of a series of charges relating to stalking and causing several residents fear and alarm between September 2018 and August 2021.

The couple are alleged to have spread malicious rumours that Ms Henderson and her partner Stuart McMorris, 46, were drug dealers, repeatedly filmed them and deliberately soaked their children with a sprinkler.

Court papers also allege that the Astons made reports to various authorities that Ms Henderson was abusing and neglecting her children, while the Astons are also alleged to have thrown shards of glass and compost onto their neighbours’ property.

Ms Henderson also told the court that she received a visit from Crimestoppers officers who had received an anonymous tip-off that the couple were dealing drugs from their four-bedroomed family home.

When asked by prosecutor Clare Green who she believed was responsible, the mother-of-two replied: “Jacqueline Aston”.

The court also heard that Jacqueline Aston had made a complaint of threatening behaviour to the police against Mr McMorris in 2019 but no charges were ever brought.

Ms Henderson told the trial that the police, the GTCS and East Lothian Council investigations had all been abandoned after finding no foundation to the allegations.

The Astons deny the charges against them.

The trial, in front of Sheriff John Cook, is due to continue next year.