Colby John Sterling’s stalking victim speaks out for first time

A brave stalking victim has spoken out as her tormentor’s face and true depth of his harrowing campaign of fear is revealed for the first time. *Distressing.

Stalker Colby John Sterling. November 2023. Photo: Andrew Hedgman

Each night before she goes to sleep, 20-year-old Phoebe double checks every window and door is locked in the house she’s spent around $9000 fortifying.

She tenses up when she hears a car that sounds like her stalker’s drive down her street, before quickly checking the security app on her phone to see if she recognises the vehicle.

She’s sure to mix up her routes when she’s driving around town, just in case she’s being followed.

Even though her former lover and the father of her child, Colby John Sterling, was charged with and convicted of stalking and domestic violence breaches three months ago, Phoebe sticks to her security ritual, still living in fear of what he might do.

“It’s hard to feel like you can live your life however you want to when you feel like you could be watched at any point,” she said, in an exclusive interview after this publication revealed Sterling had been released on parole.

Phoebe first met Colby through a mutual friend in 2019 when she was just 14 and he was 16.

They lost touch but reconnected a couple of years later and started dating shortly after her 17th birthday.

The next few years were rocky, with the young couple breaking up and getting back together multiple times.

“We were good for about a year, and then he cheated and I broke up with him. And then (we) tried to make things work, it was on-and-off then,” she said.

When Phoebe was in her final year of high school, she unexpectedly fell pregnant.

The couple had broken up again and Colby had moved to Mackay but returned to the South Burnett for the birth and they decided to try to make it work.

Their troubles peaked when Phoebe confronted him about an issue she claims he lied about and she decided to end the relationship for good in May 2023.

But Colby wouldn’t let it go.

Still hopeful he would want to build a relationship with their daughter and that they could have a healthy co-parenting relationship, Phoebe didn’t block him from her phone or social media or completely cut him out of her life.

That’s when he started harassing her over text, demanding to know where she was and who she was with and blowing up her phone when she didn’t respond quickly enough.

Sometimes he sent hundreds of messages over a couple of days and would call and text at all hours of the day and night.

His messages would alternate between threatening to kill himself if she didn’t respond to him to begging her to send him nude pictures or have sex with him.

When she moved house, he found out where she lived within two days, and Phoebe came to the chilling realisation that some of his messages contained information he couldn’t have known unless he had been watching her or her home.

One morning in August 2024, more than a year after they broke up, she noticed the gate, which she always kept closed between her carport and house, was open, which immediately made her wary.

She messaged Colby that night on Snapchat and asked him if he had been at her place.

At first, he denied it but then he admitted he had snuck into her yard and hid outside her bedroom window, listening to her while she was intimate with someone else.

When she reported the incident to the police, she told them she did not feel safe in her home anymore.

“After Colby said (he was there), I was mortified that he was at my house without me knowing. It made me feel sick,” she told police.

“The feeling (of) sickness became worse after these messages (knowing that our) privacy had been invaded. It also made me feel ashamed. It makes me feel unsafe in my own household.”

Colby’s actions culminated in two court cases.

In November, 2023 he pleaded guilty to seven breaches of a domestic violence order in Kingaroy District Court which heard he sent his victim almost 300 messages over four days including one which read “Yeah, that’s right, ignore me, I’ll come and shoot your house up c***”.

For that, he was placed on 18 months’ probation.

Then, new court documents viewed this month revealed he had recently returned to Kingaroy District Court after stalking and harassing Phoebe over a four-month period between April and August 2024 when he sent abusive messages demanding to know where she was and who she was with and waiting outside her bedroom window.

Judge Jennifer Rosengren declared his 96 days in pre-sentence custody as time served and sentenced him to 12 months’ jail, with a parole release date of January 7, 2025.

Phoebe attended Colby’s hearing, and after hearing the judge she was “gobsmacked” by how many times he had breached the DVO, she was a little surprised by the outcome.

“I felt as though the judge was very harsh on him (throughout the hearing),” she said.

“And then the outcome of only an extra month on top of what he had (previously been sentenced to) was sort of contradicting how she was acting.

“Like, yes, he is on parole. But he is still out in the community.”

When he was released from jail in January, she was so scared she would see him that she barely left the house.

“When he was in jail, I felt a lot better,” she said.

“When he first got out, I only left the house to go to work. Like I went to work, went home - that was it.”

“I would message someone when I was home ... People would come to my house and stay the night just so I felt (safe).”

Even though Colby hasn’t attempted to contact Phoebe since he was last in court, the idea that he might is always in the back of her mind.

While most people in Phoebe’s life have taken Colby’s actions seriously, because he didn’t physically hurt her, some have struggled to see his behaviour as domestic violence.

“Just because he didn’t physically hit me, doesn’t mean it’s not domestic violence,” she said.

In her victim impact statement submitted to the court, Phoebe said the mental impact the situation has had on her and her family and friends would be felt for years to come.

“Sometimes you go, I would have rather had a black eye than not being able to trust anyone.”

In hindsight, Phoebe said there were other things that should have raised a red flag early on in the relationship.

She said he was possessive, would tell her what to wear and try to stop her going out without him.

While she didn’t find his behaviour particularly disturbing at the time, she now can’t believe she let him treat her that way.

“I was like, ‘oh that’s nothing, that’s just him being protective’.

“Like he doesn’t want people to look at you.

“Now I look back, and I go, ‘what was I thinking?’ Allowing him to get away with that?”

Phoebe’s advice for other women going through a similar situation was to collect as much evidence as early as possible and to talk to someone they trust about their concerns.

She wishes she had not brushed off his behaviour for so long in the hope he would change for his daughter.

“If they wanted to change for their children, they would. Yet he continued to prove to me he wasn’t going to change,” she said.

“Don’t let them walk all over you just because you have a kid with them. Don’t let them get away with it.”

Originally published as Colby John Sterling’s stalking victim speaks out for first time