Man Who Stalked Ex-Fiancee Gets Prison Time

A Cobb County jury convicted a man on charges of aggravated stalking for violating a protection order by harassing his former fiancee with hundreds of threatening phone calls and text messages, the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office announced.

Austin Luis Joseph, 33, was engaged to the victim for ten years, but the relationship became abusive and the woman left Joseph in the summer of 2011. Despite this, Joseph continued to abuse her and she was granted a protective order in August of that year.

Prosecutors said that after Joseph left the state in the fall of 2011, he continued to harass his former fiancee by sending her more than 600 phone calls and more than 450 text messages from various private and internet phone numbers, all of which were allegedly traced back to a phone owned by Joseph’s brother.

“The text messages showed the cycle of abuse the defendant would put the victim through. In one text message he would call her by her nicknames and say how much he loved her and wanted to see (their) children. In the next message he would curse at her for not picking up his phone calls,” ADA Lindsay Gardner said in a release.

Joseph was arrested by Cobb County sheriff’s deputies on April 1, 2013, according to records at the Cobb County jail. Joseph’s trial began on Aug. 25 of this year and ended on Aug. 28 with his conviction on one count of aggravated stalking.

Following his conviction, Cobb Superior Court Judge A. Gregory Poole sentenced Joseph to serve six years in prison and four years on probation.