A woman was hospitalised in Rome after a virtual stranger slashed her in the face with a razor blade and head-butted her for rejecting his advances, reports said on Friday.
The woman will be scarred for life after the attack, doctors said.
The stalker also punched the woman's young son during the vicious attack in Rome's southern Casilina district before running off.
Two days after the attack, the woman's house burned down.
Police have since arrested her alleged attacker, who is an illegal immigrant of no fixed abode. He was detained in the Tor Cervara district on Rome's eastern outskirts.
The woman said she had met the unnamed man in a dentist's waiting-room, where he struck up a conversation with her and they exchanged phone numbers.
The man then allegedly began bombarding her with increasingly aggressive text messages day and night and threatened to kill her when she refused to go out with him.
Besides assault charges, the man faces charges of stalking, which is a criminal offence in Italy.
It was not immediately clear if he also faced arson charges.