St Andrews Doctor Of Peace Road Rage Trial

A top university's head of peace and conflict studies has been cleared over a road rage incident - after she claimed the allegation had been invented by the son of a farmer who she had been involved in a bizarre three-year neighbour dispute with.

Dr Hazel Cameron, the director of the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the St Andrews University School of International Relations, faced a charge of dangerous driving over an alleged incident in rural Fife.
 
She was accused of driving her car at Thomas Struthers, who was skateboarding on the road at the time, and forcing him to take evasive action to avoid a collision.
 
But the allegation wasn't passed on to police until several days after the alleged incident, the day after Mr Struthers' father, Michael Struthers, had been released from custody by police after an allegation was made against him by Dr Cameron.
 
Dr Cameron - a former police officer - said she had been the subject of a campaign of "intimidation" by Mr Struthers, which included him being found outside her bedroom window early one morning and saw him gluing padlocks, preventing her using her driveway.
 
The academic said a row over ownership of a narrow strip of grass verge around her cottage was at the root of the dispute - with the farmer at one point claiming he could drive his tractor through her garden if he so wished.
 
Dundee Sheriff Court was told that Mr Struthers has planning permission for a large development of 12 houses on his rural farm at Glenduckie, Fife - but that relies on him taking ownership of the verge outside Dr Cameron's cottage.
 
She has now sold that property and moved away from the area as a result of the case.
 
Mr Struthers declined to comment on a series of allegations Dr Cameron made against him from the witness box.
 
Dr Cameron told the court she had been met by police at the gates of her cottage when she returned from London, where she said she had been working with the Crown Prosecution Service on an extradition case.
 
She said: "This incident did not happen. It is a lie. 

''For three years I was victimised by Michael Struthers.

"He insists a bedroom extension on my property from 1960 - long before I moved in - is on Glenduckie Farm land.
 
"On more than one occasion my dogs alerted me to someone outside - barking - and he had to emerge from the undergrowth.
 
"Another time I was woken by my dogs and he was outside my bedroom window."
 
Thomas Struthers, 19, earlier told a trial at Dundee Sheriff Court that he had been out on his skateboard on June 29 last year when the alleged incident occurred.
 
He said he and pal Cameron Hopkin had been boarding downhill on a single track road between the A913 and the hamlet of Glenduckie, Fife, where both Dr Cameron and his family live.
 
Mr Struthers said he had heard the car coming round a blind bend as he moved up the hill - then tried to cross on to a two-metre wide verge to get out of the way.
 
But he claimed her Land Rover Freelander was going too fast for him to make it across the road - and that she sped up as he clambered on to a narrower verge closer to him.
 
And the teenager said he believed she had driven at him because of a dispute between the academic and his father, Michael Struthers.
 
Mr Struthers said: "She tried to hit me.
 
"Because of the dispute between her and my dad - that is why she was trying to hit me.
 
"The car missed me by about six inches.
 
"I had to lean over the fence into a field to avoid it."
 
Cameron, 48, of Castlehill, Glenduckie, Fife, denied a charge of dangerous driving on summary complaint.
 
Sheriff Lorna Drummond QC found Cameron not guilty at the end of a two-day trial.
 
She said: "I found the two witness's evidence to be vague in places.
 
"Dr Cameron gave her evidence in an entirely straightforward way with clear recolletion of events.
 
"I believed what she told the court about past difficulties with Mr Struthers."
 
Dr Cameron was formerly a police officer with Central Scotland Police until she was medically retired in 2000 after sustaining an injury on duty.
 
She has previously researched the trafficking of asylum seeking children in Glasgow and took up her post at St Andrews in February 2011.
 
Speaking outside court, Michael Struthers said: "There are two sides to every story.
 
"However, I better not say anything."