Revenge is a dish best served to love rats in public

The saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" is most appropriate in the case of Jacqueline McQuade, who has been handed an 18-month suspended sentence and banned from the British town of Royal Wootton Bassett.

Her crime?

Heartbreak. Well, that and the fact that she put up posters of former boyfriend Christopher Mock all around his home town. They featured his face and claimed he was a "love rat", and messages such as "Watch out, there's a rat about".

McQuade, 54, a London teacher, has no criminal record but, when her ex married another woman shortly after they broke up, things changed.

Instead of sending passive-aggressive tweets and doing a cryptic-but-cruel Facebook status as twentysomethings might, she made posters, drove 150km to Royal Wootton Bassett, and distributed them.

She isn't the only woman to have resorted to extreme revenge.

In March, an ad appeared in a Texas newspaper congratulating Shara Cormier and Patrick Brown on Cormier's pregnancy. It ended: "Hope you both are really in love and I hope it works out. Always, Patrick's wife, Timeshia Brown."

Ouch.

On a US TV talk show this week a leading divorce lawyer revealed how the division of possessions after a marital split can flounder on the rocks of vengeance. When the husband's legal team entered the family home to collect his rightful share, they found that all the labels on the bottles of his multimillion-dollar wine collection had been steamed off and thrown away.

Back in 2010, the spurned mistress of one of Barack Obama's economic advisers put up giant billboard posters across the US to reveal the relationship after the man went back to his wife. Charles Phillips was forced to admit publicly to his affair with YaVaughnie Wilkins, who apparently spent more than $252000 on the billboards.

Reports this week related how a man caught cheating on his wife in Virginia, in the US, had agreed to wear a humiliating sign and to stand on a high street corner for a week. The sign: "I cheated. This is my punishment."

Cameron Diaz's new film The Other Woman focuses on the topic of female revenge. A group of women find out they are being three-timed by the same man and set out to exact their detailed, cruel and well-planned revenge. At first glance it might seem like the typical stuff of Hollywood but, after hearing these true stories, it is evident that many women are attracted to extreme revenge.

So why is it that, in so many cases, it's a woman who is publicly humiliating a man? Susan Quilliam, a relationships expert, says that, though men and women can both behave like this, it is often women who take the more drastic measures because they feel they cannot physically hurt a man.

"Women know they cannot take on a man physically so they go for creative revenge," she says. "It's the only way they can feel better."

There is also something in the fact that these women are not teenagers. McQuade and Wilkins are in their 50s and 40s respectively, and it could be because of their age that they chose public revenge.

"You get to a stage where you completely put your trust in someone and they let you down," says Quilliam. "It isn't enough to just say it in words or keep it to yourself. You have to act on it. Finding ways to shame him or do something you know would hurt."

It isn't that older women are naturally more vengeful, it's just that they have probably had their hearts broken more and so they care more and hurt more, she says.

According to Quilliam, it works in the short term and the women do feel better, but she adds: "In hindsight, they might think, 'What was I doing?'" Long-term it doesn't really help.

McQuade can console herself that she isn't the only respectable woman to lose all sense of rationality temporarily and lash out in hurt. Even actress Kate Upton, also starring in The Other Woman, has been cheated on and said: "I personally think the best revenge is just walking away and not wasting another second of your time with someone who's clearly emotionally handicapped."

But, then again, Upton's only 21. Maybe if something similar happens to her in her 50s she, too, will be out there printing off "love rat" posters.