A student has been jailed for ruining her female lecturer’s life with a web of lies including faking terminal cancer.
Elisa Bianco, 22, from Cornwall pretended she had cancer and had been abused by her parents to move in with her caring teacher, Sally Rettallack, then used horrible mind games to cause problems between Sally and her husband.
The twisted student broke up her lecturer’s marriage and even sparked a fake love interest with her online, by posing as a man.
The student met Sally, 49, on her college course and produced an elaborate sob story. Elisa claimed she had been abused by her parents and then managed to convince her lecturer to let her move in.
Her disgusting deceit didn’t even end there, claiming she even had terminal cancer and only had three months to live.
Elisa’s disgusting web of lies promoted her concerned lecturer to give up work and help fulfil the students ‘bucket list’, Truro Crown Court heard.
She would be dropped off every day at the hospital, would sit in a cafe in her pyjamas and even dress herself in fake bandages.
After Sally’s marriage broke down, the sick student then set Sally up with a ‘recently widowed’ consultant physician called ‘John’ – who was actually her using a ‘husky’ voice and fake email address.
They became close after exchanging emails, but Elisa invented another cancer diagnosis for her internet lover and killed him off before the mother-of-four could meet him.
With the lecturer’s life left in pieces, she has now moved to France to rebuild her life, the court heard.
Elisa pleaded guilty to stalking, causing serious alarm or distress and has now been jailed for two years and eight months.
Speaking about this case, Judge Christopher Harvey Clark QC describe it as ‘ a strange but very disturbing case’ and compared Elisa to a ‘uninvited cuckoo fledgling in the nest of a willow warbler’.
Delivering his verdict, he said to Elisa: “You heartlessly manipulated Mrs Retallack’s deepest emotions. No sentence will compensate her.”
Elisa met Sally when she enrolled on a college course taught by the health and social care tutor in 2009. Then a 16-year-old, she aced her first year but after Sally became her personal tutor that’s when she seemed ‘socially isolated’, the court heard.
Speaking after Elisa’s arrest, Sally spoke of her ‘darkest deception’.
She said:
I was an outgoing, positive, career minded individual who loved her job and developed a real pride and satisfaction nurturing the young people who would be in my care. I had a close, loving home life. My entire family had empathy for Elisa’s personal situation and welcomed her into our home. Now I have no career, no job, no husband, little self confidence and have recently started to try and rebuild my life by moving to France.
This is absolutely horrendous. We can only hope Sally does manage to rebuild her life after this disgraceful deceit she suffered.
