A man waged a hate campaign on social media after he was dumped by his wife via Facebook, a court heard.

Christopher Graham Bateman threatened and abused his estranged wife Denise after she ended the relationship in May.

But then the 48-year-old also targeted Denise’s daughter Lauren Dahl and her boyfriend Lee Crowder’s car sales business during the three-day campaign.

Bateman, formerly of Macclesfield, now of Buxton, admitted harassment at Macclesfield magistrates’ court.

He was sentenced to eight weeks in prison suspended for two years.

The court heard that Bateman was a former bus driver who had been left severely disabled after a crash.

It was heard that he turned to alcohol to deal with his problems.

Debbie Byrne, prosecuting, said after Mrs Bateman used Facebook to end their relationship Bateman began using a fake Facebook profile called ‘Mary George’ and an old account belonging to his wife to attack the trio.

She added: “On May 12 Denise Bateman logged onto her Facebook account and saw a post from a Mary George showing a photo of a young lady in PVC underwear and mentioning her daughter Lauren in the comment.

“Lee is a director at Lyme Green car sales, where Lauren is a salesman.

“The Facebook page for the business started to get messages.

“Lee then started to get phone calls from the defendant threatening if he didn’t ‘get his wife back’ he would ‘do some damage’ to the business.

“Lee had to switch the business phones off to stop the calls.

“Denise then began to get obscene messages calling her a ‘whore’ and threatening to post her phone numbers all over Facebook.”

The court heard that phone records showed Bateman had made 81 phone calls between May 12 and 14.

In a statement Mr Crowder said the experience had been distressing, while Miss Dahl said she feared Bateman would come to her house.

Mrs Bateman said her husband ‘thrived on hurting people’ adding “he tried to drive a wedge between my family but they come first.”

Claire Aldridge, defending Bateman, said: “These were horrible messages.

“He turned to alcohol to cope with is medical problems. He was a bus driver who suffered serious back injuries.”