Crime tsar: I can’t get my stalker prosecuted ... so what hope do other victims have?
A POLICE and Crime Commissioner has revealed she was herself a victim of a relentless stalking campaign which left her fearing for her safety and unable to sleep.
Katy Bourne, publicly elected commissioner for Sussex and a noted campaigner on behalf of stalking victims, has told of her five-year ordeal in which she was humiliated on dozens of blogs and websites, and filmed and followed when she left her home.
Yet, despite a dossier of evidence against the man behind the harassment, which includes false online claims that she protected paedophiles, the Crown Prosecution Service ( CPS) declined to bring a prosecution.
Today, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, former Conservative councillor Mrs Bourne, 53, likens the CPS’s decision to a ‘punch to the stomach’. In response, she is set to make a major speech in London tomorrow calling
He said I covered up the murder of local woman
for stronger legal protection, and a cultural shift in attitude, to better serve the 700,000 women a year in Britain who find themselves a victim of stalking.
Although stalking has been a criminal offence since 2012, Mrs Bourne is backing plans, currently going through Parliament, to introduce Stalking Protection Orders, which would allow police to prohibit contact even before a prosecution. Mrs Bourne said: ‘ Stalking is a really insidious crime and wears you down over a long period of time. We need a cultural change. Stalking is a crime, not a nuisance.’
Mrs Bourne’s ordeal began after she won her bid to become a Police and Crime Commissioner in 2012, having carved out a successful career in local business and politics. The role involves holding her local force to account on behalf of the public.
But problems began after local father-of-two Matthew Taylor set himself up in the self-created role of ‘ Shadow Police and Crime Commissioner’. On his website Mr Taylor describes himself as ‘an author, writer, actor, performer and public speaker’ and claims he has served with the military police. He began attacking Mrs Bourne in blog posts.
Comments in response to the Twitter feed for Mrs Bourne’s office began as political but they became steadily more personal, and started to include a series of outlandish lies, including that she was having an affair with a colleague. ‘He said on his website I was involved in child abuse and that I covered up the murder of a local woman. I had an official campaign photo which he edited online, writing underneath: “ensuring paedophiles and masons are all safer in Sussex”.
‘Various other doctored images of me started appearing. One was of a woman’s body in a negligee with my face pasted on. It was directly targeting me as a woman and making it sexual.’
It was when her stalker covertly filmed her that Katy started fear- ing for her safety. ‘ One night in July 2016 I was talking at an event and hadn’t realised he’d recorded me. He then filmed me from outside on the street looking in.’
Footage of a charity abseil, although not filmed by Taylor, was posted online with comments such as ‘you should have slit her rope’.
Mrs Bourne’s banker husband Kevin, a former soldier, became worried about her safety, and she raised a harassment case, which was passed to the neighbouring Surrey force to avoid any perceived conflict of interest. She also obtained a civil injunction against Mr Taylor and was given a special phone by police in case of emergencies.
The following year Taylor was arrested yet in May 2017 the CPS dropped the case, saying there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution. Mrs Bourne said: ‘I think they thought because I had a civil injunction that was enough.’
She i s now campaigning for legal change, and has supported funding for local stalking support service Veritas Justice.
A CPS spokesman said: ‘ We received a file from the police in March 2017 in relation to an allegation of harassment linked to online blogs. After careful consideration, we concluded the evidential test set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors was not met and therefore no charges were authorised.’
Responding to the allegations, Mr Taylor said last night: ‘I reject all claims that I harassed and stalked Katy Bourne. I simply asked serious questions about police corruption which she and her office choose to ignore.’