Former Coronation Street star Nicola Thorp has opened up about her two-year stalking ordeal and the moment she saw him for the first time.
Ravinderjit Dhillon sent messages to the Corrie actress calling himself ‘the grim reaper’ and used 25 aliases to contact the actress online threatening violence. He firsted started contacting her in October 2018.
Dhillon, 30, was convicted of stalking involving fear of violence after a trial in April and was due to be sentenced this week.
Nicola, who played Pat Phelan's daughter Nicola Rubinstein in the soap, appeared on Good Morning Britain on Tuesday to discuss the ordeal - and the problems she faced during the police investigation.
Try MEN Premium for FREE by clicking here for no ads, fun puzzles and brilliant new features.
The 34-year-old also spoke on the ITV show of the moment she froze in fear after realising she was stood behind Dhillon in a queue.
Nicola told Susanna Reid and Ed Balls: “You want to know if you're going to be able to take care of yourself if he was to approach you in the street. That was the big thing."
“My main question was, ‘Would he be able to carry me?’ and that's devastating. Because with these kinds of crimes, when he's kept anonymous, they become every single person that you meet. He was every guy at a bus stop. He was the person at work who looked at me funny. He was the guy in the supermarket. He just became everybody.”
Nicola told the show that she knew nothing whatsoever about her stalker’s identity for seven months and said she pleaded with the police to tell her more.
She said: “When I got the phone call, saying that he'd been arrested, I was so relieved. I thought, ‘Fantastic, who is he?’ and they said, ‘We can't tell you’. I asked, ‘But where does he live, roughly?’ They said, ‘We can’t tell you.’ I said, ‘Do I know him? Is he an ex-partner?’. ‘We can’t tell you anything,’ they said.”
She went on: “For months, I kept begging them, ‘Please, can I just see a photograph of him or [know] his name?’”
It was only when Nicola attended court, after a stalking protection order was taken out against Ravinderjit, that his identity was finally revealed.
She said: “It was only when I saw his name on the piece of paper outside court, that I saw his name for the first time. I begged them [police], ‘Please can you just show me a photograph of him?’ because he had quite a common name.
“I tried to find him on Facebook. They eventually showed me a photograph and said we can only show you here in the police station."
She said police also refused to show the image to her partner and family members, who had also received threats.
Police told Good Morning Britain that the investigation was hampered by the “complex and protracted” process of obtaining information from social media companies in order to prove Ravinderjit was the man behind dozens of chilling messages.
Calling on the police to do more to support victims, Nicola revealed the moment she finally laid eyes on the man who had left her living in fear.
She said: “It was a few weeks ago at his sentencing that I turned up to court. You have to queue before you go inside and you go through security. You give your name to the security guard as you're going through.
“I was actually stood behind him in the queue. He gave his name to the security guard at which point I just completely froze because that was him. That's the man who had harassed and stalked me since 2018. And he was right there in front of me.”
Nicola said women should not be expected to change their behaviour online.
She added: “It is on men to change their behaviour and also for the police and the authorities to give us the tools to be able to protect ourselves. He had all the power.
“When he had this stalking Protection Order taken out against him, the conditions, his bail conditions were that he wasn't allowed to contact me. And the only person who would know if he had contacted me, was him. How is that right?”.
She praised the police for taking the crime seriously but added: “I just wish the focus wasn’t just on punishing the perpetrator but helping the victim through the process as well.”
A court heard earlier this year that Nicola had detailed the harassment she faced from Dhillon in an 89-page document given to the Met Police, and in it, she said the campaign of abuse started in 2018 when he sent her a graphic picture of himself.
Using aliases online, Nicola said Dhillon became an “army of men” who made violent threats against her, and she said the impact of fighting for the rights of women in the public eye has “come with some personal cost”.
Police eventually linked Dhillon’s IP address to the accounts he used to harass Nicola, and he was arrested.
To watch the interview and show in full visit itv.com. Good Morning Britain is on weekdays from 6am on ITV1 & ITVX
