Training | 2010.01.29
Stalkers are criminals – not 'incompetent suitors'
A man who harassed a woman for seven years has been jailed for just 16 weeks. Why is the law so slow to realise that stalking is a serious – and often violent – crime?
Claire Waxman has spent much of the last seven years living in terror. During that period, her stalker has followed her relentlessly, broken into her car, bombarded her with letters and gifts, made silent phone calls – even arrived at her daughter\'s nursery posing as a prospective parent. She says Elliot Fogel has caused her so much stress that she had a miscarriage, developed an eating disorder, and moved house five times in a bid to escape.
When police raided Fogel\'s home, a search of his computer revealed that he had Googled her name 40,000 times in one year and downloaded her wedding photographs. Yet last week a judge sentenced Fogel to just 16 weeks in jail for twice breaking a restraining order. Reports say he could be out in six weeks.
Anti-stalking campaigners are furious about the sentence, and say too little is being done to protect victims. "This is a big problem, and many professionals don\'t understand the issues," says Laura Richards, a criminal behavioural psychologist and a director of Protection Against Stalking. "We are where we were on domestic violence 10 years ago."
Dr Lorraine Sheridan, a forensic psychologist, says that one in five women and one in 10 men will be stalked in their lifetime – for at least six months. "Stalking has a massive effect [on victims]," she says. "Other crimes are acute – they happen quickly. But the average stalking case goes on for two years. I have seen one that went on for 45 years.
"The unpredictability and the uncertainty take their toll. Almost every victim suffers anxiety, sleeplessness or eating disorders. The effects are mental, physical and financial – it costs a lot of money to prosecute stalking cases, or to fix things they have broken. Some people also lose work." Victims often feel a sense of isolation and fear for their loved ones. "Friends drift away – either they are threatened by the stalker or can\'t handle it." In an online survey of more than 1,000 victims of stalking in 2005, a quarter said that their children were targeted, a third said family and friends were also stalked, and a fifth said colleagues were harassed.
Victims such as Waxman are often left feeling like "sitting ducks" because of light sentences, and they may have to change jobs, homes or even countries to escape. Waxman has talked of emigrating because she is so frightened of what may happen next, saying, "Until something terrible happens, [Fogel] won\'t get the treatment he needs."
Ann Moulds understands this terror. She fled from her home of 30 years, abandoned her business and even changed her name, after an unsigned Valentine\'s card marked the start of one of Scotland\'s worst stalking cases. The sexually explicit card was followed by photographs of an unidentified man in women\'s underwear, posted to her Ayrshire home in 2004. "By the third photograph I knew I had a stalker," she says.
Moulds went to the police, but says they did little to stem the silent phone calls and explicit, anonymous letters. "The deviancy of the cards shocked me. I was living on my own and was terrified." Two years later she finally discovered who was behind it – a man called Alex Reid.
"Ayrshire is not a big town and I knew him to say hello to. A year before the stalking started, I had bumped into him. He knew my daughter had gone to university, and told me if I ever needed anything to give him a call."
After the chance meeting Reid occasionally phoned her, and feigned outrage when he heard about the photographs. Later he offered to sleep on her couch to protect her. It wasn\'t until he sent her a sexually graphic text message that she realised he was the culprit.
Moulds went to the police, but although Reid was questioned and DNA-tested, he was released. A few months later, after more silent phone calls, police finally raided his home and discovered photographs and letters addressed to her. With no anti-stalking legislation in Scotland, it is dealt with as a breach of the peace, and sentencing powers are limited. When Reid was sentenced to just 260 hours of community service and three years on the sex offenders\' register, Moulds was devastated.
"My nerves were shattered, my hair was falling out, I had lost weight. I was advised that if I stayed [in Ayrshire], I would need to keep CCTV up at my house, stay on the alarm to the police, and keep vigilant. But stalkers don\'t give up so I had to leave to get safety – all because he did not go to jail. He is walking the same streets, but my life was destroyed."
Now, thanks to her campaigning, an amendment is going through the Scottish parliament which could change the law to align it with the tougher sentences that can be passed in England and Wales. Yet campaigners say that although the law is stronger south of the border, stalking is still sometimes dismissed by the criminal justice system. Under harassment laws, a stalker can be sentenced to up to six months in prison, or, if they put their victim in fear of violence, up to five years. Breaching a restraining order can also incur a penalty of up to five years in prison – but, as in Fogel\'s case, this is seldom given. Richards says that professionals, too, often let down victims. "In patches things are good," she says, "but it\'s a postcode lottery."
Richards advises the Association of Chief Police Officers on violent crime, and has created an assessment called the Dash risk model (2009) to determine the danger each stalker poses. The idea is that as soon as a victim says they are being stalked, the agency dealing with them (which could be health, housing or social services) will complete a risk identification checklist to see if they need to be referred to a specialist unit. "There\'s a misconception among many professionals that if there\'s no physical violence, there\'s no risk, and that\'s absolutely a flawed assessment," says Richards. "The police are implementing the Dash model, but you still have to get through to the lawyers, probation services and magistrates." As with Fogel, there is an assumption that a stalker is just an "incompetent suitor". Judge Fraser Morrison described Fogel as someone who wasn\'t "able to take the hint".
This attitude is why so much stalking goes unreported; Richards says that "a recent survey found that 77% of victims won\'t report stalking until the 100th incident". Tracey Morgan, who works with Protection against Stalking, says many incidents will not seem threatening to an outsider. "It might be flowers every day for a month. And family, friends – or even people in the criminal justice system – will say \'Aren\'t you lucky.\'" Morgan\'s campaign helped bring in the 1997 Protection Against Harassment Act after her stalker was not jailed (he is now in prison for attempting to murder another woman). "If [the flowers] come with a card saying \'I am watching you\' it is terrifying," she says. "It\'s the constant barrage – dripping-tap syndrome."
Neil Addison, a barrister who specialises in harassment law, agrees that this can be a problem for the justice system. "Individual incidents may be trivial, but it\'s the totality of the incidents that make it harassment . . . Most stalkers are intelligent enough not to make threats; it\'s their presence that causes the fear, because you don\'t know what they will do. They often concentrate on their victim never feeling free of them, rather than a direct threat."
This can lead to important warning signs of violent intent being missed, says Richards, because crimes are seen as isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern. "I have seen cases where the stalker has cut the victim\'s brake pipes," she says. "It is then dealt with as interfering with a motor vehicle or criminal damage, rather than attempted murder. But if a victim was travelling at 80mph that is very dangerous. This means their action is not recorded as being a serious incident and patterns get missed. It may look as if the stalker has no previous history on the intelligence system and there is no warning or criminal record."
Such violence can go hand in hand with stalking, and can end in murder. "I did a study of 5,000 victims," says Sheridan, "and one in five had been sexually assaulted by a stalker. The violence rate is 20-30%." This is more common when the stalker and victim have had a previous relationship, such as in the case of Clare Bernal, who was just 22 when she was shot dead in the Harvey Nichols store where she worked. Her ex-boyfriend, Michael Pech, a security guard at the same store, had been due in court a week later for stalking her and had been released on bail when he murdered her and turned the gun on himself. Her mother, Patricia, says Pech had already threatened to kill Clare, but the Crown Prosecution Service had advised her to drop the charges. "One night, as he was following her, she turned around and told him she would report him. He said, \'If you report me I will kill you\'. Then he smiled and stroked her face. We didn\'t know what to do. She was so scared."
Patricia Bernal set up the charity Protection Against Stalking, and says that a lack of physical violence should not mean stalking is treated lightly: "Stalkers need to be treated as dangerous and high risk. At the moment you need a black eye to be considered in danger." She is appalled by the sentence handed down to Fogel. "Mind games and mental trauma can be serious. Claire Waxman\'s life was turned upside down by this."
Alexis Bowater, the chief executive of Network for Surviving Stalking, says that in April the first helpline for victims will be set up, with Home Office funding and the help of anti-stalking charities. "The law is strong," says Bowater, "we just need to let people know it is there to protect them."
Yet to Morgan, the Fogel case illustrates how little attitudes have changed, how difficult it still is to secure a significant sentence for stalking. "Victims are never taken seriously – from police forces, to courts, to the whole criminal justice system. Claire Waxman is saying the same thing I was 15 years ago. What\'s changed? There needs to be a sea change in attitude. It\'s about murder prevention."
• For more information, see Network for Surviving Stalking at nss.org.uk , or Protection Against Stalking at protectionagainststalking.org
• Do you have any personal experience of being stalked? Do you have strong opinions about the current laws regarding this crime? The Women\'s page invites your comments for possible publication. Just email women@guardian.co.uk
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/29/stalkers-are-criminals
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