'I was frightened, but furious': How lockdown made it easier for stalkers to terrorise their victims

Two weeks ago, Laura*, was tagged into a chilling post on her stalker’s Facebook page. “There is no more dangerous person than a person who has nothing to lose,” he wrote. Two days earlier, the man – who we will call Alan – had been found guilty of three charges of stalking, breaking a stalking order, criminal damage and malicious communication. Yet still he was free to threaten and terrorise.

That post was the culmination of Alan’s cyber-campaign against restaurant owner Laura. “Alan went from sneering comments on my lockdown Facebook Live cooking demonstrations to tracking down ‘friends’ from my page, and hurling abuse at them in the street,” she says. “At one point, I received texts from unknown numbers telling me that ‘gangsters were going to get me’, and that someone was going to kill me and my son.”

More and more stories are emerging of how stalkers took advantage of the pandemic lockdowns to hunt their prey. The isolated streets and certainty that we were holed up in our own homes made it easier for stalkers – who had more time on their hands – to target their victims. It meant many felt more vulnerable, as well as being unable to access support.

Police statistics show that 80,000 offences were reported to forces in 2020, a “significant increase”. According to the Office for National Statistics, one in six women and one in 12 men will experience stalking in their lifetime – although Paladin, the national stalking advocacy service, thinks this a dramatic underestimate.

Increasingly, stories are emerging of how stalkers have been using technology to hunt their prey. In the old days, they waited outside people’s houses; now, via a computer, phone or tablet, they target victims inside their homes.

This week, former soldier Carl Davies was found guilty of sending death threats to the former BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin via Instagram. He had used the same platform to tell Minchin: “your daughter will be raped.” He also posted details of the family’s address.

Davies had form: in 2019, he was handed a lifetime restraining order for threatening to stab and burn ex-girlfriend, Girls Aloud singer Nicola Roberts. At one point, Davies had 35 fake social media accounts. The worst of his abuse of Minchin happened between July 14 and 17 2020, while much of the country was still in lockdown.

According to Unmasking Stalking, a survey carried out by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the charity which runs the National Stalking Helpline, incidences of such warped intimidation have risen enormously over the past 18 months. They report a rise of 49 per cent in “online behaviours” towards those whose experience of stalking started before lockdown. One in six respondents reported that their stalking began after the first lockdown. Seventy-nine per cent of those calling the National Stalking Helpline were women.

Figures collated after the first lockdown showed that 82 per cent were stalked on social networking sites such as Facebook, 65 per cent of women by text or direct message, and 53 per cent by email. There was a significant rise compared with pre-lockdown.

“Cyber-stalking can be defined as a malicious or obsessive following through internet presence,” says cyber-security expert James Bore. “Stalkers track down and follow their victims through social media. They might even locate them in the real world, and try to contact them there.”

Emma Short, an associate professor of psychology at De Montfort University, agrees. “Police, and people representing victims, saw that the blocking of normal channels compelled stalkers to be technically agile,” she says. “We were sitting ducks in our own homes.”

Bore concurs that incidents of cyber-stalking have gone up during the pandemic. “We haven’t been able to get out and see people, so ‘parasocial’ behaviours [when someone imagines they have a relationship or friendship with a media figure] have sprung up,” he says.

In 2002, Edward Vines was sent to prison for stalking Newsnight presenter, and former fellow Cambridge student, Emily Maitlis. Yet Vines, who has a “persistent and obsessive fixation” with Maitlis, continues to write her letters from jail (intercepted by prison staff) expressing his “unrequited love”, a campaign which has been going on for 25 years.

“For a long time, stalking was weirdly glamorised – as if it was just a “celebrity thing,” Maitlis told The Telegraph yesterday. “It couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s just those cases are the ones that get picked up. I don’t think people realise how commonplace it actually is.”

Alan’s stalking campaign against Laura started four years ago, after she fired him for inepitude from his job in her business. “He told me: ‘you ruined my life, I am going to ruin yours,’” she says. “He started out with a malicious poster campaign, smashing my restaurant windows and putting paint on my car. There were 13 separate incidents, but it was very hard to get the police to take me seriously.”

Lockdown forced Alan underground, and onto social media. “He kept looking at my business Facebook page, commenting in weird and oblique ways,” says Laura. “He interrupted a fish-cooking masterclass I was giving to post that I looked like Hattie Jacques, then shared links to news stories about how people had been poisoned by fish. He told people I had sexually assaulted him, and stole the £4,000 I had raised for repairs to my restaurant. I was frightened, but also furious.”

So why not block him? The astonishing response to this is that it’s not possible to block a visitor to a business Facebook page. “And to get to my personal Facebook page, Alan set up four or five different accounts of his own,” says Laura.

Bore explains how hard it is to keep out the most dedicated stalker. “Even if you block an individual, even if you have your privacy settings locked down, it’s easy to set up fake profiles,” he says. “People can impersonate bona fide Facebook friends – or hoodwink you into accepting them onto your Instagram network. It’s incredibly easy to do. If you can set up a real profile, all you need is a ‘throwaway’ email address to set up a fake one.”

Online retailer Faith" began to be stalked in February 2020 by her new partner’s former wife. “She messaged me on social media to tell me what a nasty person my boyfriend was, that he had sexual problems,” says Faith. “I wrote and asked her never to contact me again.”

Two weeks later, the ex-girlfriend discovered Faith’s business address online, came to her house, and scratched ‘whore’ on her car. Then lockdown started.

“So she went online,” says Faith. “She set up multiple email addresses and multiple Facebook accounts under the names ‘Kelly’, or ‘Jane’. This woman went from demanding I leave her ex alone to threatening to kill herself. At one point, she was using her 11-year-old son’s WhatsApp to reach me.”

By summer 2020, things had become so bad that Faith was fearful of taking her own young children for a walk. “The claustrophobia of lockdown magnified the menace of her threats,” says Faith. “I didn’t even have the mental capacity to go shopping. In the end, I split up with my boyfriend. I really liked him, but it was not worth the trouble.”

And what of the police in all this? “I told the police as soon as my car was attacked,” says Faith. “They gave this woman a warning – basically a fine like a parking ticket – told me to block her, and not reply to any of her messages. In darkest lockdown, eight months went by before a particular police officer replied to my email. In the end, the woman was asked to write me a letter of apology, which I still refuse to open.”

Laura had more success: Alan was issued with a ‘stop and protection’ order. “But he still comes as close as he can,” she says. “At points, I have felt so physically frightened that I’ve gone to stay with family, and I’m on antidepressants and beta blockers.”

Stalking Protection Orders (SPOs) were introduced in January 2020, enabling police to ban offenders from contacting their victims online, as well as in person. But as of June this year, only 294 had been successfully applied – in around two per cent of stalking arrests. The Government rejected calls to include a stalkers register – which would monitor perpetrators in the same way as the sex offenders register – in the Domestic Abuse Bill.

“Cyber-crimes are now the most common offences, but there is no parity for a protective response from the police,” says psychologist, Dr Emma Short. Hence, a growing pressure for legal reform from organisers such as the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and other high-profile commentators.

“For 20 years there was very little joined up thinking,” says Maitlis. “So I was made to repeat what had happened over and over again to multiple agencies and many forces. I think there has now been a recognition of how hard it makes it to come forward. It takes over your life, if your efforts to recount the problem seem to go nowhere and you are always starting from scratch.

“I hope and honestly believe this is changing now – records are being kept and digitised – there is continuity and information is shared,” she adds. “That makes a massive difference for everyone involved.”

*The name has been changed

The National Stalking Helpline is open 09:30-16:00 Monday to Friday on 0808 802 0300 and also provides information on local services, methods of reporting, improving your personal safety and ways to gather evidence