Stalking

Julian Huppert Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Llwyd]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely correct and I agree with every word she has said. The group’s strength is the fact that it is all-party, so Politics—with a capital P—plays no part in our deliberations.

The reason that stalking is hard to delineate is that it consists of a catalogue of incidents that, when taken alone, can seem innocuous enough to begin with. It is only when they are taken together that their cumulative and sinister effect can be seen. In many stalking cases the perpetrator will never issue an overt threat, but rather plagues his or her victim with flowers, phone calls, letters and gifts. It is thought that victims tend to wait until the 100th incident of stalking before reporting the matter to the police.

The advent of the internet also provides perpetrators with far greater opportunities to attack their victims—for example, on social media websites such as Twitter and Ask.fm and on online forums. Individuals can shield their true identity by adopting pseudonyms and hiding their IP address. More and more, the phenomenon of internet trolling is becoming an issue of concern. Multiple individuals can target a victim by sending them abusive messages, sometimes hundreds at a time. The recent examples involving Caroline Criado-Perez and the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) are cases in point.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on raising this subject so consistently—the House will miss him greatly when he stands down in a year and a half. He is right to make the point that a huge number of victims do not always realise that they are victims, whether online or offline. There were about 120,000 victims last year, most of whom were not recorded by the police and probably were not recognised. How can we encourage people to realise when stalking behaviour is starting so that they can spot the problem early?

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Gentleman is right, because part of the campaign we are running is about making people aware of the cumulative nature of this insidious offence. It is important that not only the people who might suffer it, but professionals in the field, get into training as soon as possible so that we can plug the gap properly.

Research conducted by Lorraine Sheridan in 2005 found that half of stalking victims had to give up social activities as a result of stalking, while half saw their performance at work affected and 98% reported emotional affects such as distrust, appetite disturbance, insomnia, agoraphobia, self-harm and even suicidal thoughts. Research by Laura Richards in November 2011 revealed the horrendous long-term nature of stalking behaviour, as well as the effect that has on victims. One in every two victims who took part in the survey had been stalked for longer than 18 months, and 42% were stalked for more than 24 months. With protracted stalking campaigns there is a real risk of escalation. Offenders can ultimately go on to attack, rape, cause serious harm or even murder their victims.

Our inquiry panel was in little doubt that victims were not getting enough support and that the prevalence of the crime far outstripped police investigations, arrests and charges brought against perpetrators. Indeed, almost all of those who have evidence to us were persuaded that the 1997 Act was not doing an adequate job of protecting victims of the crime. The Act was passed with the best intentions—I was here at the time and played a small part in it—but the wideness of its provisions was in many respects its weakness.

In his foreword to “An evaluation of the use and effectiveness of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997”, David Moxton stated:

“The Act came into force in June 1997 and was intended to deal with the overt problem of stalking.”

But in her summary of the same report, Jessica Harris noted:

“One of the Act’s aims was to tackle the problem of stalking, but it also covered a range of behaviour which might be classed more broadly as harassment of one kind or other... The Act is being used to deal with a variety of behaviour other than stalking including domestic and inter-neighbour disputes and rarely for stalking itself.”

Those are problems we saw. Answers to parliamentary questions asked by members of the panel gave various pieces of important information. For example, we discovered that in 2009 4,365 persons were found guilty under section 2, the offence of harassment, but that the number receiving a custodial sentence was only 565—13% of those found guilty. Our research also showed that it was highly unusual for persons to be found guilty of the section 4 offence, which is putting a person in fear of violence. In 2009, 786 persons were found guilty, of whom only 170 were given a prison sentence—22% of the total. Our report states:

“The number of persons found guilty of breaching a restraining order under Section 5 of the Act was 1,463 in 2009 and the percentage of those jailed was 32%. However if the figures are taken as a percentage of all the offences recorded during 2009 then only 2% were jailed and 10% were fined or dealt with in other ways.”

What was so concerning about the fact that so few perpetrators were given custodial sentences was not simply that victims were denied justice, but that the individuals involved were not being given treatment to address their obsessive behaviour. Stalking is undoubtedly a characteristic of obsessive behaviour. The evidence we compiled for our report showed that most perpetrators of stalking commit multiple breaches of restraining orders over their criminal “careers”. Some individuals breach four or five times. Examples submitted to the inquiry showed that some individuals breached their order more than five times and still received either a fine or another form of non-custodial sentence.

We also heard evidence of numerous perpetrators being charged with offences that were less serious than stalking and focused on only one incident of abuse, rather than the whole pattern of behaviour. We were persuaded that it was essential that courses of conduct should be taken into account. If offences of this nature are not taken seriously and properly prosecuted and if the perpetrators are not treated, the underlying problems prompting that behaviour will never be properly addressed.

To be fair, the Government acted quickly on many of those recommendations and passed legislation in March 2012. However, despite the new 2A and 4A offences coming into force in November 2012, there are concerns that the new laws are not being used widely enough and that many police forces have not held training on the new offences.