Sarah Hyland was today served with a digital restraining order in which she has to maintain a distance of 500 posts from Maurice Canning at all times.
The decision was handed down at Dublin's Criminal Court this evening by Judge Nicholas Clarke, who told the defendant that she must refrain from going on the 29-year-old's page and drooling over his photos.
Hyland was arrested back in November of last year after Canning complained to authorities that the Waterford native kept liking his status and commenting on his pictures despite only being a friend of a friend.
Canning subsequently unfriended Hyland, but this didn't curb her social media activity as the receptionist bribed friends of Canning in order to use their accounts to perv on the Galway bank manager. We spoke to a distraught Hyland after the hearing:
I'm absolutely appalled at the setting, this sets a very dangerous precedent for future cases. Facebook was invented for looking at people you fancy. This is definitely a dark day for creeps through out the world. I will be appealing this decision.
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This is the first sentence of its kind to be handed down and it will be interesting to see how it is enforced. Hyland remains adamant that she will still be an active user of Facebook, and it has yet to be revealed how the restraining order will be policed.
Reports have suggested that Hyland will be forced to delete any mutual friends that the two may have as well as making sure they haven't liked the same Facebook pages in order to reduce the chance that they will come up in each other's newsfeeds.
Canning spoke to the media after the hearing, saying that he just wants to get on with his life and that he will be far more discerning with friend requests in the future.
