We need as a society to stamp out the insidious crime of stalking
UNA RING barely gave her former colleague, James Steele, a second thought before the text messages started coming. It started innocuously enough. He asked for help organising a conference at his new firm. When he had her cornered alone in a room, he made a physical sexual advance, which was rebuffed.
At first, he apologised via text. Then the texts grew increasingly ominous, culminating in a threat to call to her home. Later, her car and her home were vandalised, before sexually explicit and threatening letters were left on her car. When he was arrested, on her property at 3am on July 27 last year, he was armed with a crowbar, he was carrying a rope and duct tape and wearing surgical gloves.
Last week, Steele, of Reavilleen, Rosscarbery, Co Cork, was jailed for five years after he pleaded guilty to harassment, attempted burglary with intent to rape, possession of articles with intent to cause a crime and two counts of criminal damage.
Ms Ring was lucky. She bravely went to the gardaí when the text messages she received from Steele began to feel menacing and gardaí were waiting outside her house, having mounted a surveillance operation, when he arrived with his rape kit that night.
Many other women, unfortunately, do not have the confidence to approach gardaí when messages they receive begin to make them feel uncomfortable or scared. They wonder whether they are overreacting. They may be embarrassed at the content of some of the messages. They may be fearful of retaliation, or the publication of sensitive images, if the gardaí are involved. They are concerned about judgment, from friends or family.
Ms Ring is an example to every woman. Do not second-guess yourself. Do not wait until there is an explicit threat, either verbally or in writing, before seeking help. If someone is making you feel unsafe or alarmed, document it and report it. Today.
Stalking has been defined as “a pattern of unwanted, fixated and obsessive behaviour which is intrusive and causes fear of violence or serious alarm or distress”. It rises above the level of mere harassment because of the obsessive nature of the relentless abuse and the terror it instils in its victims.
In the UK, it has been estimated that there were a mammoth 1,472,000 victims of stalking in 2018 and 2019 alone. There is no reason to think the extent of the problem in Ireland is any less. In fact, a recent survey from Women’s Aid found that onefifth of young women had experienced abuse, which included emotional abuse, physical violence, sexual assault, stalking and harassment.
That figure amounts to 44,540 young women aged between 18 and 25 who have experienced this type of abuse. If the age range is expanded, the total number of women in Ireland who have been violated in this way is vast.
We know the problem is pervasive. We also know that lockdown has exacerbated it, with victims becoming, in effect, sitting ducks. One cybersecurity company, Avast, has revealed that the use of online spyware and stalking apps increased by 51pc during the first lockdown. Paladin, the UK’s National Stalking Advocacy Service, reported a 70pc increase in requests for support throughout the first three months of lockdown last year.
Reliance on devices and social media, to do everything from work to communicate with family and friends, has made people increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack and cyberstalking. You can lock your front door at night, but our dependence on tech means we can inadvertently leave a back door open, through which abusers walk straight in .
Social media allows stalkers to easily keep tabs on their victims and the apps they use facilitate their aberrant behaviour by providing new and innovative ways to harass, humiliate, control, threaten and isolate their victims. The seriousness of this type of offending cannot be underestimated. One 2017 study of 358 homicide victims in the UK, all of which involved a female victim and a male perpetrator, found stalking behaviour as a precursor in 94pc of cases.
Stalking is not just unwanted attention that can be easily brushed off. It is suffocating, demoralising, debilitating, alienating and often lethal. As a society, we need to do much more to stamp it out. For a start, in this country, we should name it. In Ireland, currently, there is no specific stalking offence. Instead, offences are prosecuted as a form of harassment, as happened in Ms Ring’s case.
But, although the ingredients of both crimes are similar, there is a strong argument for including a standalone offence of stalking. In Scotland, the introduction of a specific stalking offence resulted in a huge increase in prosecutions. In the 10 years prior to the law being enacted, there had been just 70 prosecutions for stalking. In the first four months of it coming into force, there were 150.
The law offered clarity, to prosecutors and complainants, about the nature of the crime and the types of behaviours that were captured by the offence while the public debate surrounding the passage of the law highlighted the issue and emboldened victims to come forward.
Stalking should not just be classified under the umbrella of a broad range of offences that can be categorised as harassment. It is more insidious, more dangerous and has a more detrimental impact on its victims. What Una Ring endured was not mere harassment. It was deadly obsession that culminated in a premeditated attempted rape. The end result could have been even worse, if gardaí had not been there to intervene.
Stalking by its nature is furtive. The law should dismantle this veil of secrecy by unambiguously naming offenders for what they are. It would also communicate to victims that their experiences will be taken seriously and they don’t need to fear coming forward. Help is out there.
It’s not just unwanted attention that can be brushed off. It is suffocating, debilitating and often lethal
HAVING endured 70 winters, I thought I knew all there was to know about Irish precipitation. Apparently not.
A man from a neighbouring county, Carlow, tells me I have just been caught in a shower of graupel (soft hail), further denting my selfassuredness in these disquieting times. Michael Gannon
St Thomas’s Square, Kilkenny