100 messages a day... a Kiwi’s stalker horror

It started with a few comments on the young woman’s YouTube videos; most of them harmless, if a little strange. When she didn’t reply on YouTube he took to Twitter, sending a barrage of tweets that switched between sweet and sour, complimentary and insulting.

He insulted her hairstyle and called her names – but at that stage, she says, it was not unlike other comments she’d had from older men (this in itself, of course, a sad fact). She blocked him, as you would.

That was early 2019. Skip forward nine months and this young woman’s life has become a daily nightmare. She moved across the world to further her career and is horrified to find her stalker has moved there too.

The abuse has reached a level she can’t combat. Gradually, she’s had to shut herself down, pin her edges in, make her imprint on the world smaller, just at a time when she hoped to spread her wings.

To promote her work she must publicise where she’s going to be, but that’s now too dangerous. She locked down her Twitter account. Everywhere she goes, she must tell everyone in advance about the creep, in case he turns up.

I’m not naming this woman because she’s asked me not to – she already feels raw and exposed enough. Once we might have called her paranoid. Unfortunately, the more we learn about stalkers, her caution seems like common sense.

This week Women’s Refuge Nga¯ Whare Whakaruruhau o Aotearoa released a report on intimate partner stalking. There are plenty of warning bells rung in Relentless, not Romantic.

The period of attack can stretch from months to an average of two years, and all too often ends in violence. The report notes that despite it being far more common for a woman to be killed by an ex or current partner after a stalking bout, ‘‘even police with specialist training... are more likely to consider stranger stalkers behaviour as... problematic, and dangerous’’.

If this was the case with the young woman I’ve been talking to – and police did seem willing to help in the beginning at least – it certainly has not led to any relief, let alone an arrest.

Early on she found her stalker’s identity, and was horrified by some of the things she read. She called the police, which began a parallel tale of woe, she says.

For a while the officer in charge of her case was helpful. They tried to contact the man, but failed. Then that officer went on sick leave. There was a brief respite, when things went quiet. This has been the pattern; lots of contact, then weeks of silence.

This man has made her afraid, but it has also made her angry. She signs off her latest email defiantly: ‘‘I feel like my blood is on fire.’’

Police closed the case, only for him to come roaring back. She contacted police again, read his disgusting, sexual messages to the nice officer. She got a new case number and a promise to get right back to her. She waited weeks, and eventually got an email saying there was nothing they could do, apart from passing on the information that he has moved to the same country she now lives in.

There is nothing the police in her new country can do, either, she’s been told. This week, this young woman watched as the abusive messages reached 100 and more, in a single day.

Stalking is not a gendered issue – women do it too, although not as often – and our system is failing.

The onus is often put back on the victim to protect themselves (through legal non-contact orders and the like) rather than on holding the perpetrator to account. The effect of online stalking is not taken seriously enough. Making and enforcing laws to stop it is hard, because a text or a phone call viewed on its own might not seem menacing, and victims find themselves scrambling to justify their complaint.

Police told me they do take stalking seriously and are committed to making improvements to the way they recognise and investigate. They consider Women’s Refuge a ‘‘key partner’’ and will be looking at ways to use the new report to improve their response.

They also support changes to legislation, but of course they can only do what the legislation, and the Solicitor-General’s guidelines for prosecution allow.

The Women’s Refuge report calls for a strengthening of the Harassment Act, the Telecommunications Act and the Harmful Digital Communications Act to allow police to more easily prosecute stalkers, especially partners or former partners.

This, together with a focus on more and better training for police and other agencies to help New Zealand understand what stalking looks like and take it seriously, is urgently needed.

In this young woman’s case, all that seems a long way off. This man has made her afraid, but it has also made her angry.

She signs off her latest email defiantly: ‘‘I feel like my blood is on fire.’’