Stalking victims will no longer have to wait until their tormenter’s trial to find out if it someone they know, due to new protections announced today.
The ‘Right to Know’ is coming into force alongside other changes, but what is it, and why is it necessary?
With one in seven people aged over 16 being victims of the crime, particularly affecting women and young people, there have long been calls for better protections.
New statutory guidance has been introduced so that people will learn the identity of the person accused of harassing them at the earliest opportunity.
At the moment, victims – mostly women – do not find out until their case gets to court, often worsening their anxiety and creating suspicion.
It comes after Coronation Street star Nicola Thorp spoke out about her experience being harassed by a man calling himself the ‘Grim Reaper’, who used 30 different social media accounts to send her abuse over two years.
She told Metro how in one chilling incident, he told her he was close enough to smell her as she travelled on a train.
Even after his arrest, she was not told his name until his trial last year, when he was sentenced to 30 months in prison.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has committed to using ‘every tool available’ to take power from abusers and hand it to victims.
She said today that:
Nicola, who played Nicola Rubinstein on the popular ITV soap, told how even after her stalker was identified and arrested, she was kept in the dark about who he was.
‘As part of his bail conditions, I was told that he was banned from contacting me,’ she said.
‘But the only person who would know if he’d contacted me was him. He could be the guy I had a pleasant chat with at the bus stop, he could be a casual acquaintance, he could be the taxi driver whose car I sat in.’
It led to her wondering if anyone she met might secretly be her tormenter.
According to the Metropolitan Police, if you are being stalked you should:
Seek support from trusted friends, family and colleagues, or call the National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0300
Report it to your local law enforcement
Keep all contact with your stalker to a minimum
You don’t need to keep a record of evidence but it can be helpful to have a record of:
Each incident and what happened
Whether there were any witnesses
What the person harassing you looked like
Recordings of any phone calls
Secure your technology, with Refuge’s guide on how to do this here
She is not the only one to have called for change. The announcement comes two years after a complaint against the police by anti-stalking charity the Suzy Lampugh Trust, which said ‘deep-rooted systemic issues’ put victims at risk.
The government has committed to ‘accepting or partially accepting’ all its recommendations.
A damning review of criminal justice system by London victims’ commissioner Claire Waxman found it did not understand stalking and was ‘complicit’ in allowing cases to escalate.
It found that two-thirds of stalking suspects in the capital had offended before, and that80% of reports made by victims are initially recorded as domestic abuse or harassment rather than stalking.
‘Victims have been failed for far too long by a criminal justice system that is still struggling to identify and understand stalking,’ Mx Waxman said.
She called for wholesale reform of stalking laws, saying the report shows ‘too many stalkers are able to evade justice’.
‘Confusing legislation is hampering the police’s ability to build strong cases, enabling stalkers to act with impunity and leaving victims at risk.’
Emma Lingley-Clark, Interim CEO of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, said the findings showed the need for ‘urgent action’ from all agencies to ‘improve the response for stalking victims’.
Stalking is a pattern of fixated and obsessive behaviour that makes the victim feel scared or harassed.
It can involve repeated behaviours and can last a long time.
One in five women and one in ten men experience stalking, according to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust.
A third of the victims had a prior acquaintance with their stalker. Many victims are stalked by ex-partners.
The ordeal can take over someone’s life. According to researchers, 50% of stalking victims curtailed or stopped work because of the abuse.
The 1997 Protection of Harassment Act targeted all forms of harassment, including stalking.
Then, in 2012, the law was amended to make stalking a specific offence.
Stalkers face ten years in prison if convicted of stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm or distress.
Stalking Protection Orders were introduced in 2020 to give police new powers to stop stalkers.
The ‘Right to Know’ statutory guidance has now been introduced, allowing victims to know the identity of their alleged stalker at the earliest opportunity, rather than only when court proceedings start.
Stalking Protection orders will also be made more widely available.
Victims do not tend to report the stalking to the police until the 100th incident.
In 2021, the Metropolitan Police recorded 1,000 cases per month, compared with 200 cases per month in the year to April 2020.
The Home Office said the rise in reported cases was a result of changes to the way police forces record the crime.
In 2022, 6% of reported stalking cases in England and Wales ended up in charges being brought.
In comparison, in 2014 and 2015, 37% of reports resulted in charges.
A third of all reported stalking cases are dropped due to difficulty obtaining evidence.
Of all the cases that end up in court in England and Wales, 66% end in conviction.
In April, former safeguarding minister Laura Farris issued new statutory guidance to police forces to apply a lower standard of proof when issuing SPOs.
That meant that there would be fewer barriers to issuing an SPO.
‘Previously the police would have to meet the criminal standard which is beyond reasonable doubt.
‘We’re lowering that now, so they only have to persuade a judge on the balance of probabilities, a kind of 50-50 test, that a Stalking Prevention Order is appropriate,’ Farris told Sky News.
‘We must continue to treat stalking with the utmost gravity. Having doubled the maximum sentence, and introduced a new civil order to protect victims, we know there is more we must do,’ Farris added.
Discussing the cases of former Met Police officers David Carrick and Wayne Couzens, Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe said ‘we must be better at identifying escalating predatory behaviour’ before people go on to commit more serious crimes, such as rape or murder, like those two former officers did.
Among the escalating offences they named were flashing, stalking and abuse.
The mother of murdered university student Libby Squire said gateway offences should be met with longer prison sentences.
Lisa Squire told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that treatment for offenders should be enforced and ‘we should unpick their thinking and change their thinking’.
Her 21-year-old daughter was abducted, raped and murdered while walking home from a club in Hull in 2019 and she has been campaigning for earlier intervention and harsher punishments ever since.
Married father-of-two Pawel Relowicz was jailed for life with a minimum term of 27 years after being found guilty of her rape and murder.
Relowicz, a Polish butcher, had been carrying out a campaign of sexually motivated crimes in the student area of Hull, peering through windows to watch young women and breaking into their homes to steal intimate items.
Ms Squire said: ‘We have been conditioned to accept it, we accept these lower-level offences happening to us, and it’s “oh, nobody was hurt”.
‘They don’t get long sentences – it could take two or three years to get to court and they might get a six month or eight-month sentence, or suspended, so (victims ask) is it worth it?’
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