A businessman has narrowly escaped jail after he posted intimate pictures of his mistress on a secret Instagram site when they split.

Hugh Fleetwood, 67, who runs a specialist furniture business, had a five-year affair with the woman behind his wife’s back.

But when the mistress, who can’t be named for legal reasons, ended the relationship Fleetwood began a campaign of harassment against her, posting intimate pictures, including ones of her performing a sex act on him and the pair naked together in a massage parlour, on social media.

Magistrates in Liverpool were told that Fleetwood’s ‘successful life’ had imploded because of his ‘utterly unforgivable’ behaviour. 

The court heard his wife of 25 years had left him, his two children are barely speaking to him and he has been forced to sell his luxury home, on the Wirral, Merseyside, and his profitable business to pay for their divorce.

‘By all accounts he had a fairly blameless and successful life, something a lot of people would envy,’ his lawyer John Gallagher said.

‘That has crumbled around him. His marriage has broken down and he is subject to divorce proceedings. 

‘His children are barely speaking to him. He wishes to re-establish some relationship with them but they have sided with the mother on this. That resentment towards their father remains.’

Hugh Fleetwood, 67, pictured leaving Liverpool Magistrates Court after being handed a suspended sentence for harassment and posting intimate pictures of his mistress online

Both Fleetwood’s mistress and wife of 25 years were in court last week as he pleaded guilty to harassment, sharing photographs of a person in an intimate state intending to cause alarm, distress or humiliation and sending a photograph of genitals to cause alarm, distress or humiliation.

He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 24 months, and ordered to carry out 80 hours of unpaid work.

Diana Przemecka, prosecuting, said the affair began in 2020 via a secret Instagram account set up online.

The victim knew Fleetwood, a prominent freemason, was married but claimed they had an ‘intense emotional bond’ and that he had promised to leave his wife for her. 

She also said he told her they would set up home together and even began learning her native language.

But when the affair broke down last year Fleetwood began harassing the mother-of-two.

He contacted her friends and family and added them to the Instagram account. 

Activity on the platform then intensified and he started to post intimate pictures of them together, including an image of her performing a sex act upon him and another of her lying naked on top of him in a massage parlour.

In a victim impact statement, the woman said she felt comfortable taking the intimate videos and pictures because she believed there to be ‘genuine love and mutual respect’ between them.

But, she said Fleetwood, managing director of Scanflex, a leading developer of adjustable living and working accommodation for the disabled, had ‘weaponised the images’ to ‘humiliate and shame’ her.

‘There was a clear power imbalance that he used as a tool to target me,’ she told the court.

She said she was ‘relieved’ Fleetwood had admitted wrongdoing but claimed ‘the impact’ of his crimes ‘continues to deeply affect me.’

She said she lived in ‘constant fear’ and her mental health had ‘suffered drastically’ as a consequence.

‘My children have had to witness the pain this has caused our entire family,’ she said.

Mr Gallagher, defending, told the court that his client had entered guilty pleas and accepted the ‘likelihood of humiliation and embarrassment he had caused’.

He also wanted to apologise for his ‘appalling’ behaviour, the solicitor said.

Mr Gallagher said the relationship began when Fleetwood, of Bromborough, Wirral, was ‘feeling isolated’ after his twins left home to go to university at the same time.

‘His behaviour is appalling,’ the lawyer said. ‘He became involved in a relationship. When that relationship broke down his behaviour was utterly unforgivable and he accepts that. He has had time to reflect on that. He apologises profusely for it.’

Magistrates also made Fleetwood the subject of a restraining order, banning him from contacting his victim for three years, and ordered him to pay more than £1,000 in court costs and compensation.