Maitlis: stalker ordeal will stay with me for life
EMILY MAITLIS, the BBC Newsnight presenter, has compared being pursued by a stalker with suffering from a chronic illness and said she fears the ordeal will continue for the rest of her life.
As Edward Vines was sentenced to 45 months in prison for breaching an indefinite restraining order against her, Maitlis spoke of her despair. “I get lovely messages of support from people saying, ‘Oh, you must be so relieved it’s all over, you must be so relieved he’s in prison.’ And I think, you don’t understand that this has literally been going on for 20 years.
“It feels like a chronic illness for me. It’s not that I ever believe it will stop, or he will stop, or the system will manage to prevent it properly,” Maitlis told BBC Radio 5 Live.
The 47-year-old mother of two said she could not bear to hear her stalker’s name or see his picture because it felt “like a boot in the stomach”. She and her husband have struggled to maintain a normal family life, she said.
“You’re having to think about things that are just ludicrous, like how you get in and out of the front door and how [the children] are getting back from school. And it’s not that you think everyone is out to kill you, you recognise it as a paranoia, but it doesn’t make it any easier,” Maitlis said.
Vines has turned up outside the family home, Maitlis’s places of work and her mother’s house in Sheffield. Most recently, he sent her letters from prison and his bail hostel.
Maitlis said: “Whatever sentence he’s been given, it hasn’t worked as a deterrent. Whatever treatment he’s had, it isn’t working as a cure.”
Having to relive her experience every time Vines ends up in court has been “agonising, punishing and humiliating”, she said. “It’s like bashing your head against a wall. Here is a man who has been convicted of the same crime and been given the same sentence over and over again. That cannot be right.”