12 years ago today, I believed the 25th of November would become a momentous day for victims of stalking across this country – the day stalking was finally recognised in law, sparing future victims from the failings of the justice system that so many of us had endured.
The laws we fought so hard to introduce have undeniably been positive. They’ve raised awareness of the devastating toll stalking takes on victims’ lives, and highlighted how these behaviours often escalate to serious violence or even murder. We’ve seen further advancements since, doubling the maximum sentence for serious stalking offences, and introducing Stalking Protection Orders.
But, 12 years on, I have lost faith that these laws are fit for purpose. At the time, it was difficult to see how the laws would be applied in practice, or the challenges they would present for police and prosecutors alike, but now is the time to recognise a change is needed.
Police are struggling to distinguish between stalking and harassment, leading to potentially dangerous offenders to get off with lighter sentences or evade justice completely. In my office, we frequently encounter cases where victims face relentless, terrifying behaviour from perpetrators—only for the police to label it as a lesser offence, such as malicious communications or harassment.
Even when police pursue a serious stalking charge, the Crown Prosecution Service can downgrade it due to insufficient evidence. This can have devastating consequences, with justice being denied for victims. In one case, the police pursued a charge for the more serious stalking offence, only for the CPS to downgrade it, declare it out of time, and drop the case entirely – leaving the stalker to continue to act with impunity and the victim at risk.
The complexity of the current legislation and confusion among police and prosecutors is undermining investigations into stalking as a serious offence and preventing timely interventions to stop stalkers behaviour from continuing and escalating.
The current laws are also placing an unreasonably high burden on victims. Victims are having to prove that the behaviour caused them serious alarm or distress and had an adverse impact on their lives. Worse, this impact must stem from the specific incident they are reporting, rather than the cumulative pattern of behaviour.
Common sense dictates that the alarm and fear from stalking is as much caused by a pattern over time as it is by any one incident. The first strange letter through the post is unsettling, the 500th is something different entirely. My own case, having been stalked for over 20 years, wasn’t even able to obtain a conviction for the more serious stalking offence, as the two incidents my stalker was charged with seemed unremarkable. But when you’re twenty years into a campaign of stalking, the cumulative impact is profound and long lasting… something this legislation doesn’t recognise.
The need to prove alarm or distress also means that the more serious charges are not applicable in cases where stalkers carry out extreme covert surveillance. In one case, a stalker was plotting to kill their victim… with a ‘kit’ in their car, ready to act. But because the victim is unaware, they cannot demonstrate the impact, and so this can’t be charged as the more serious stalking offence.
In addition to this, the structure of the legislation does very little to protect the stalking victim from future victimisation; instead, it colludes with stalkers and rewards repeat behaviour. Because victims must show that they are weak and fearful to obtain the right conviction, this gratifies the stalker and proves how successful they have been. It punishes those victims who reject their stalker’s oppressive behaviour, who are stoic and do not change their day-to-day activities, and who hide their trauma to help them carry on or perhaps to minimise the impact on their children.
Both my own recent research in the London Stalking Review and the report into the Stalking Supercomplaint brought by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust have again evidenced the pressing need for reform of the current legislation.
12 years on, I am calling for the Government to create a standalone stalking offence that provides a clear definition of stalking to simplify investigations and prosecutions and remove the onus on the victim to prove the impact of the behaviour and instead turn our focus on the stalkers and their behaviour.
– Claire Waxman OBE, London’s Victims’ Commissioner
