Stalking Law Spotlight

SPOTLIGHT STALKER NIC B884P/01 BRD000000

Stalking - it's a crime that breeds fear and terror.

Never seen this person before.

He just came from out of the blue

and became this scary character that...

..hunted me. For years.

And it takes over victims' lives.

I don't go out very often, constantly checking the doors,

constantly looking out the window.

I'm surrounded by security everywhere.

CCTV, panic buttons up and downstairs...

Alarm systems.

But in Northern Ireland, it is an invisible crime.

In purely legal terms, it doesn't exist.

We don't name it as a specific criminal offence.

But according to some victims, this means police

and prosecutors then fail to protect them.

Am I ever going to be rid of this man?

Are the police ever going to take me seriously?

Am I a nuisance to them?

Do they think I'm making it up?

So why is Northern Ireland the only region of the UK not to

recognise stalking in law?

And what are the consequences for the victims?

You may think it is something that only happens to celebrities -

movie stars or pop stars like Lily Allen.

I could see from the minute that he came into my bedroom that he

was ill and that he needed help.

The majority of victims of stalking are women and most stalkers are men.

According to research in Great Britain, stalking affects up

to one in six women in their lifetime.

If the same were to be true in Northern Ireland, that would

mean thousands and thousands of people here are affected.

Breaking the silence are women in Northern Ireland with

powerful experiences of their stalking nightmares.

In early 2011, Vicky Clarke was on

a night out in Bangor with friends.

I went to the bar to get a drink

and this man stood beside me

and said, "Do you remember me?"

I didn't know him, I couldn't remember him.

We just had a wee chitchat and that was it.

Um, a couple of months later,

he popped up on Facebook

and befriended me, if you like.

The pair dated during that summer.

Vicky remembers they had good times together.

Scenic places, parks, cafes...

We'd have driven quite a bit around, if you like, the peninsula.

I did have feelings for him.

Bruno Mars, "Catch a Grenade for You",

believe it or not was our theme song!

And also, there was a very soft side to him.

But it was a short-lived romance.

After just a few months, Vicky said she told him

he wasn't the man for her.

And he didn't react well.

PHONE RINGS

One night, she switched off her phone

to get a break from him persistently contacting her.

I woke up to text messages and missed calls from friends

saying, "Vicky, check your Facebook page, quickly".

So I did and I was horrified.

What she saw was a sexually explicit photo of her

that he'd posted online.

I was panicking, I couldn't... It was one of those moments

when you're just trying to get on the computer as quick as you can.

I was so ashamed, so humiliated,

so degraded.

Vicky says she foolishly agreed to him taking some photos,

but she thought he had deleted them.

We were out one night, had a couple of drinks, came back to his place

and I posed, if you like,

for a couple of photographs.

He asked for them.

I didn't think anything about it.

I didn't realise that this could happen to me.

She went to the police, but they didn't charge him with any offence.

So she ended up keeping in touch with her ex,

she says in part to ensure he didn't do anything more with the pictures.

I led on to be friends with him.

I thought if I don't aggravate him or I don't annoy him,

then maybe if I just seem like we're friends,

maybe then he won't start doing his worst.

But that wasn't the case.

Over the next few months, she says he bombarded her with texts,

e-mails, letters and cards.

Some were messages of love,

others were threatening.

And then he wrote, "Every breath I take

"I think of you, I love you with all my heart,

"I never ever will hurt you,

"I will honour and respect you, I am here for you, my only love."

He then began following her and turning up at her workplace.

Some days, he showed up on her commute to or from work.

I wanted him to stop, I didn't want him to come near me.

I was coming home over the Queen's Bridge in Belfast,

he actually came to my window at the traffic lights

and started banging on my window, "I love you!"

at the top of his voice.

I didn't know what to do, I was terrified.

It does seem like

normal relationship break-up stuff at first?

Yes, it was like that for me, I thought he was just heartbroken and

he was just trying to keep in touch with me, but it moved from feeling

loved, if you like, or heartbroken, to feeling actually quite scared.

But what Becky didn't realise was that what was happening to her

had all the hallmarks of stalking.

Stalking behaviour can happen

when the couple are still together,

so for example a husband or partner turning up in the workplace,

following the person when they're going on a night out.

So it happens when the couple are still together,

but happens more predominantly when...

Once the couple have separated.

Whilst part of Vicky badly wanted rid of him,

she also still had feelings for him.

She says on one occasion, even after he posted the intimate

photo on Facebook, she slept with him a final time.

I mucked that up myself.

He persisted and persisted in contacting me.

Hindsight's a great thing.

But I didn't know what this person was like,

I didn't know what he was like.

Vicky eventually cut off all contact with her ex, and the PSNI

attempted to make a harassment case against him, but it failed.

She accepts that the police's task was made more difficult

by the fact she hadn't made a clean break from the relationship.

After the case collapsed, she says the stalking behaviour got worse.

She claims he made threats to kill her.

She also moved house, but he found out where she was.

Vicky documented and reported incidents to the PSNI.

In March 2013, she was back at the police station

to log another approach from her stalker.

And when she left, she says he was actually waiting outside for her.

I went back into the police station, thinking great, police officers

are going to witness him, cos all the time I've been doing this,

you have to have witnesses, you have to have evidence, record everything.

According to Vicky, her stalker made up an excuse for being there

and the matter was closed.

But the incident left her with serious questions

about the police attitude to what was going on.

I thought, am I ever going to be rid of this man?

Are the police ever going to take me seriously?

Am I a nuisance to them?

Do they think I'm making it up?

There were times, more intermittent,

Vicky says her stalking ordeal has continued.

Recently, police have provided her with a panic alarm,

but they still haven't built a case against her alleged tormentor.

So in March, she applied to court herself.

On the day of the hearing, her former boyfriend signed

an undertaking promising to leave her alone.

I've been robbed of five years of peace,

feeling normal,

feeling safe,

being a mum who's carefree and happy.

I feel like I'm tired of firefighting, that I've had to fight

a stalker, I've had to fight the police, I had to fight the court.

When we contacted the man Vicky said stalked her, through his

solicitor, he said that he

"vigorously and entirely denied her allegations".

We also asked the PSNI to respond to Vicky's claims that they had failed

to investigate her case properly and viewed her as a nuisance.

The police said they could not comment on Vicky's case

as the police ombudsman is investigating

a complaint from her about their handling of it.

What we're doing is a bunch of women are getting together

and we're going to sign a petition

and bring it to the Assembly to ask them to change our laws.

Vicky and friends are gathering signatures for her

"laws for women" petition.

They are protesting because Northern Ireland is the only

region of the UK that does not have stalking legislation.

They're demanding Stormont now make stalking a specific

criminal offence.

I'll chain myself to the gates of Stormont

and that's just how far I'm going to go with this. They have to listen.

The government has to listen.

Stalking involves persistent and clearly unwanted attention.

It can cause fear, anxiety, alarm or distress.

In extreme cases, victims have been murdered.

Usually, it involves tracking someone

and sometimes in the most mundane ways.

Leaving gifts is a behaviour that's very common -

unwanted, romantic gifts - that other people would not

regard as problematic in any way, shape or form,

but actually, to the person that receives that gift,

it's a real...

You know, it's a threat.

It's a threat because that's saying, "I know where you are,

"I know what you're doing."

Because stalking isn't named in law in Northern Ireland,

the type of unwanted and persistent attention Vicky was receiving

is simply called harassment.

However, the harassment law is broad

and includes all sorts of behaviour,

like minor neighbourhood disputes.

Vicky says this downplays the particular severity of stalking

and some victims feel that it leads to their cases

not being properly understood.

Stalking victims say labelling what is happening to them as harassment

is a serious shortcoming that's having an impact on their lives.

Failure by police and prosecutors to identify patterns of stalking

behaviour was a key finding in a Parliamentary report five years ago.

It said that the harassment law was "not fit to protect

"the victims of stalking".

So the law was changed

and in England, Scotland and Wales,

stalking is a specific criminal offence.

But it wasn't changed in Northern Ireland.

The man who made that decision was former Justice Minister David Ford.

There was certainly consideration of

offences around stalking -

the evidence that was available

to me at the time was that existing offences covered what is in effect

stalking and there was no need to name it specifically.

There was no justification for prioritising it against all

the other issues that we had to consider.

Solicitor Ciaran Moynagh is concerned that the law has not been

brought into line with the rest of the UK.

Having stalking defined in law

would shine a torch on that issue

and that would focus, then...

Victims would know they're actual victims,

perpetrators would know what they're doing is unlawful

and then the professional agencies would have tools

and they'd be equipped to tackle the stalking specifically.

When you raise the issue of stalking here, it's as if it doesn't exist.

Stormont says it has no statistics for stalking-related convictions.

There is no local research on the subject

and there are no support groups for the victims of stalking.

And that can leave them feeling abandoned.

If you're a victim of stalking

in Northern Ireland,

then you aren't going to get

justice, it's as simple as that.

If you're a victim in England,

although there are difficulties still, in terms of the police

requiring training and all the rest of it, you've still got a far better

chance of obtaining justice and the law is at least there to enable it.

In Northern Ireland, even if the police WANT to do something,

their hands are tied and they cannot prosecute for stalking.

But David Ford says that just because the law doesn't

mention stalking, it doesn't mean victims are not protected.

Yes, exactly.

I can certainly see how victims would see it that way.

But when you look at the whole issue of the creation of an offence,

you need to look at the balance of where existing offences fit,

how they tie together the work of the different justice agencies,

how they deal with it, as well as how victims feel.

And those judgements are frequently complex.

This is Margarette O'Donnell, a busy young mum of three from Coleraine.

If she's not with the kids or doing voluntary work,

she's often hard at it in the gym.

She's come a long way from a horrifying ordeal that

gripped her life when she was a teenager.

I just remember walking down the road,

this male voice from behind just...

"Hello, nice day, isn't it?"

Oh, it's a lovely day,

great day, good to see it.

And...

He just continued to walk

beside me and talk to me,

though the way he talked changed.

It changed from this friendly,

to this sharp voice of...

"I suppose you like a good screw? I suppose you like a good shag?"

Um...

"I bet your boyfriend likes a good shag?"

And this is basically how he started to talk to me and

he kind of got me unaware and I just froze, I didn't know what to say.

The police were called, but couldn't find him. He appeared

sporadically over months, mostly turning up at her work.

Never seen this person before.

He just came from out of the blue

and became the scary character that...

hunted me, for years.

That's the only way I can think to put it.

I really didn't realise how much of...

..our lives that it had taken over,

it's only when you talk about it now.

Scared to go out, Margarette spent much of her time in her

bedroom and the stress took its toll,

not just on her, but on her family,

and especially her mum.

I was obsessed with how you'd know

that anything would happen to her.

What did you worry that he was capable of?

Could he murder her?

Could he rape her?

Would she disappear and never be seen again?

Though Margarette didn't suffer any physical harm,

part of her trauma stemmed from having no idea who her stalker was,

or why he was doing it.

Nobody could protect me, this man was so powerful.

And I was powerless.

You try everything to make yourself safe,

but he could have done anything.

When the stalking stopped, she just wanted to move on with her life,

rather than cope with the psychological trauma

it had left behind.

But last year, as a result of other problems she was experiencing,

she found herself struggling with depression.

In November, she decided to take her own life

here at Ramore Head.

What was it like being here that day?

I had this day planned, like...

I knew when I dropped the kids off,

that would be the last time I'd see them.

I didn't want to live, I didn't...

I just wanted everything to end, the pain to end.

Margarette was ready to jump,

but a passer-by intervened.

Looking back, it's been hard for her to realise how big a part

stalking played in her depression.

I don't think it's never going to leave me, like...

But I feel stronger.

And I don't... I don't have the same fear as I would have had.

What about him?

Are you still afraid of him?

I'm not afraid of him.

I've been afraid of what he did.

There was never any justice for what he did and I was never confident...

..that he would never do it again.

I've basically lived my life... Even though he hasn't been around,

I've lived my life with a stalker.

28% of stalking victims consider taking their own lives.

Today, Margarette is now determined to help others

facing similar trauma.

We contacted Margarette's stalker and put to him

the allegations she has made.

In a letter, his solicitor confirmed

this man was interviewed by police about these matters

in 2003, but was never charged

and the case was dropped.

He said the man denies causing any form of harassment to Margarette.

Since the introduction of the new stalking law in England and Wales,

prosecutions for it and other forms of harassment have risen.

David Ford says that it may be necessary to look at the law again.

There is clearly evidence showing what has happened in England

and Wales, we need to look to see exactly what the comparisons

would be with Northern Ireland, but it's certainly something

which appears to merit looking at it again.

So we've been seeking to ensure that Northern Ireland law

meets Northern Ireland needs and maybe on some occasions,

information comes to light two or three years down the line which

suggests we need to examine it. This may well be one of those cases.

Brenda lives every single day under siege.

I tend to go to shops that have cameras in them.

Constantly checking the doors,

constantly looking out the window.

I'm surrounded by security everywhere.

CCTV, panic buttons up and downstairs, um...

Alarm systems.

For Brenda, who didn't want her face shown,

her stalking nightmare began 14 years ago.

A man she had briefly dated began following her and making threats.

Twice, he tried to run her over in his car.

To get away from him, Brenda left Northern Ireland.

A decade later and now a mum,

she returned and it all began again.

In 2012, she took and paid for her own case to get a temporary

court order to stop her stalker coming near her.

But that didn't work.

And in 2013, he showed his total disregard for the court process.

I was sitting in the house, it was around 10.00, 10.30 at night

and the door knocked. So...

At this stage now, we all know, the stalker's on the go.

Let me in.

I opened the blind and looked out, and it was him.

He started doing the sign of a gun at his head.

And I lifted my son off the sofa, called the cops.

He's at the door, he's back.

Police charged him with criminal damage and threats to kill.

Last year, Brenda's stalker was deemed mentally unfit to

stand criminal trial and released,

pending psychiatric reports.

Despite bail conditions, within weeks of being in court,

he was back at Brenda's door.

She called the police, but by the time they arrived, he had gone.

Lo and behold, this time, the police are at my house, there's an officer

with me and the door knocked whilst I was giving him my statement.

And it was the stalker.

Out the way!

He pushed the cop out the way and got into my house

and he was standing in my house with the cops now wrestling with him,

screaming, "Will you marry me?" at like, 5.00 in the morning.

He had to be dragged out of my house by the cops

-and physically restrained to be handcuffed.

-What are you doing?

Her stalker appeared before the magistrates' court,

but was - again - let out on bail.

But just days later, he was back at Brenda's door once more.

This time, he was jailed for several months,

but he is now out of prison.

Brenda says jailing him for breaching bail conditions

and not for his stalking was, in her words, "a joke".

It's laughable. There's no...

It in no way makes you feel safe, it in no way makes you

feel like someone is going to stand up and say,

"Look, we know everything he's doing here is wrong,

"we understand what it has done to your life, we understand

and we're going to do something about it.

Because they don't.

Her stalker is now under another order not to approach Brenda,

and receiving treatment for what the court was told

is paranoid psychosis.

Brenda's case is complicated by the fact this man is

mentally ill and there's a limit to what the criminal justice system

can do to punish and restrain him.

But she says he IS still a stalker and should be named

and treated as such and she believes that

if he'd been charged with stalking, it would have focused the minds

of prosecutors on how to deal with him at a much earlier stage.

It's left her frustrated and very angry.

I'm always waiting for him to come back.

How am I ever supposed to think he's not going to come back?

We contacted Brenda's stalker through his solicitor

to put Brenda's allegations to him.

He said he did not wish to participate in the programme.

We asked the PSNI and the Public Prosecution Service to

talk about the women's concerns over the existing law in particular,

and their claims the authorities are failing to build cases

that convict stalkers.

Both declined to be interviewed.

But in statements, they said,

"While there's no specific offence of stalking here,

"this form of conduct may be covered by other types of legislation

"and they can seek to use restraining orders."

The police said they're committed to keeping people safe and no victim

should ever feel their complaints are not being taken seriously.

They acknowledge victims' issues about treating

incidents in isolation,

but pointed out if a complete offence has been committed, they are

obliged to investigate this rather than waiting for another incident.

The PPS said stalking is a complex issue and rejected any assertion

they avoid taking stalking-type cases forward using existing laws.

Vicky Clarke has come to Stormont.

Her stalker has recently signed a court undertaking agreeing not

to go near her. But her campaign to change the law continues.

Today, she's meeting MLA Brenda Hale.

We need to put a very, very clear message out there,

that actually, you cannot stalk,

you cannot make people's lives hell.

What she has been through and what her family have been through

and her friends, and yet there seems to be no help or

assistance from the justice system or the PSNI.

Brenda Hale plans to bring a Private Member's Bill

to address the gap in the law.

Today, the new Justice Minister said extending the provisions here

is something she'd be willing to consider.

But for women who have felt hunted for years,

a change will come too late.