Man Is Sentenced for ‘Stalking’ Ex-Girlfriend

In the first sentencing under the state’s new felony “stalking” law, a Calabasas man on Thursday was ordered jailed for one year for repeatedly harassing and threatening his ex-girlfriend.

Mark Bleakley, 30, a burly former carwash manager with a decade-long record of six assault, drug and weapons charges, also was ordered by a Van Nuys Superior Court judge to serve six months in a locked drug rehabilitation center.

A probation report said Bleakley “worked at stalking his victims, as a predator would stalk his prey.”

The stalking law, which carries a maximum sentence of three years in state prison, was designed to give police and prosecutors a tougher tool to deal with repeated threatening behavior, even when the individual acts might be misdemeanors.

Without the new law, which went into effect Jan. 1, police said there was little they could do about such complaints because each individual case is considered minor and time-consuming to investigate.

The felony stalking law applies to those who repeatedly threaten or vandalize the property of a victim and violate a civil court order to stop the harassment.

Bleakley, who has been in jail in lieu of bail since his arrest May 24, pleaded no contest, the legal equivalent of a guilty plea, to the charge July 22. With credit for time already served, he could be released by June.

His former girlfriend, Leslie Wein, 26, of Encino, said Bleakley began to terrorize her shortly after she broke off their two-year relationship in April. She filed 13 police reports in the case.

In April and May, Wein said, Bleakley twice slashed the tires on her car and twice poured acid on the vehicle. Court documents also allege that he stole her German shepherd dog from her house, then left photographs of the dog on cars parked outside her residence.

In mid-May, she obtained a court order forbidding Bleakley from annoying or going near her, according to court records.

A short time later, Wein said that while she was eating at a Sepulveda restaurant, two tires were slashed on a car she had rented. As she was giving information to police at the scene, officers saw Bleakley nearby, enabling them to charge him with violating the court order.

At a pre-sentencing hearing in August, Bleakley told Judge Judith M. Ashmann that he felt abandoned by Wein after their breakup and that prolonged use of steroids caused his aggressive behavior.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard F. Walmark, who urged a two-year prison term, countered Thursday that it was Bleakley, “not the steroids, that committed these crimes.”

He also noted that Bleakley previously had ignored court orders obtained by another ex-girlfriend and that his lengthy criminal record included several instances of harassment of other women who broke up with him.

Although she initially had asked the judge to sentence Bleakley to three years in state prison, Wein expressed satisfaction outside court with the sentence imposed because it also included five years probation.

She said that gives the court “five years of control over him, and that thrills me.”

She described Bleakley as an aggressive, self-confident and “extremely possessive” person who “will probably see that I hear from him again” despite Ashmann’s order that he stay away from her.

“One day, I will probably walk out to my car and find my tires slashed again,” she said.