For some, it is a joke. Something to be scoffed at.
After all, aren’t all women – because it is primarily women, according to the evidence – always seeking out male attention? So, you’ve got someone so devoted to you that he turns up unexpectedly? Poor chap. He just hasn’t understood the social signals, and you know how you teases like to lead us on; everyone knows you little ladies secretly enjoy the attention.
What’s that? Someone you’ve walked out on? Well, he’s understandably distressed. Cut him some slack, love. He’s just upset – see it from his point of view, can’t you? Stop overreacting. Jesus. Take some smelling salts, loosen your corset, and have a nice lie down for ten minutes.
Thus is the standard understanding of, and response to, anyone who says that they are being stalked, and a problem upon which a parliamentary committee, convened by Plaid Cymru’s Elfyn Llwyd MP, is about to report.
The committee has heard from a number of witnesses, both experts and victims, as well as DCI Linda Dawson who assisted the then Conservative government in drawing up the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
The British Crime Survey bears testament enough to the fact that something needs to be done: the latest data suggests that at least 120,000 individuals are affected by stalking and harassment each year, but less than half these incidents are recorded as crimes. Furthermore, there is no legal definition of stalking in England and Wales nor is it recognised as a crime in its own right, outside of Scotland which recently criminalised stalking within the provisions of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010.
The first problem is that there is no definition, legislatively speaking, in this country of what actually constitutes stalking. Broadly, stalking is a constellation of behaviours including but not exclusively: following, harassing, threatening the subject or the subject’s family and maintaining surveillance.
This means that if a victim reports an incident of, say, her pursuer making threatening phonecalls, it will be logged as a separately from other crimes he might commit in the course of his obsession; if he vandalises her car, it will be recorded as a vehicle crime. Thus, it becomes problematic to prosecute under the current laws.
The second issue is the public perception of stalking, which is frequently misunderstood as a manifestation of the perpetrator’s misplaced devotion to the victim. The Protection from Harassment Act is frequently cited by those who see the dread hand of the police state behind every utterance from Parliament as a piece of illiberal and unnecessary legislation.
In this article, The Observer’s Henry Porter says: "Under [the 1997 Act] the repetition of an action (i.e. saying something twice) can land you with a conviction,” which is like saying that because our coppers wear a uniform, we’re all living on the Death Star. It misunderstands how difficult it is to either get the police to take stalking seriously, and how unusual it is for a magistrate to impose a custodial sentence.
Incidentally, Porter states incorrectly that the Act was the brainchild of then home secretary Jack Straw instead of being the work of the previous administration but we’re all too busy to get into bogged down in the mire of what Henry Porter doesn’t know.
In addition, the psychological groupings of types of stalkers do little to instil in the authorities a proper appreciation of the terror that the activities of the former can cause. One 'type' is called the “incompetent suitor” which calls forth the mental image of Hugh 'Mungo' Grant bumbling his way through a profession of undying love whilst awkwardly brandishing a dozen red roses (aw, bless him).
The reality is the total opposite and infinitely less happy. Stalkers of this type have been known to suffer from erotomania, which is the unshakeable belief that their victim is secretly in love with them in spite of all evidence and protestations to the contrary. Men who don’t believe that no means no have not, to my knowledge, ever featured as romantic characters in a Ben Elton film, on the basis that this delusion is a frightening and dangerous one.
The most dangerous type of stalker is the ex-intimate, or intimate. The victims tend to be women who are in, or have left, an abusive relationship. At the final evidence session last Thursday, Llwyd’s panel heard that most if not all women murdered at the hands of abusive ex-partners will have experienced some form of stalking first. Many of the testimonies from such women, seen by the panel, complain that they had difficulty getting the police to take them seriously, if at all, as the stalking behaviours escalated into violence.
The Home Office is currently consulting on how to bring legislation up to date with respect to stalking, and is expected to report in February 2012, after Llwyd’s inquiry have produced theirs. What is clear is that the Harassment Act needs updating – not least to take into account of the growth in cyber-stalking since 1997.
Stalking maims the lives of its victims. It is not enough to dismiss it as somebody 'not getting the message' or subject the need for legislation to protect the public to the standard Porter-esque rant about ancient liberties being ruined by the illiberal police state.
This casual dismissal of the liberties of the one-in-five women and one-in-ten men who will be victims of stalking over the course of their lifetimes does a great disservice to all those who live in terror that the next death threat will be the last they receive.
The last they will receive not because the police, the magistrates and, indeed, the public and politicians have decided to take their plight seriously, but because stalking is currently only taken seriously once the victim is dead.
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