Victims of stalking will be given the right to know the identity of the person who is doing it, Jess Phillips, the UK safeguarding minister has said, as part of a wider look at whether legislation connected to the crime is fit for purpose.
Under new guidance from the Home Office, police in England and Wales will be told to inform people if they uncover the identity of a stalker, for example one using a series of anonymous online identities.
A toughening up of stalking protection orders will prevent convicted stalkers from contacting victims while in prison, Phillips said – adding that this had happened to her.
A report in September by a series of policing watchdogs warned that too many people were being failed by the inconsistent and confusing enforcement of laws about stalking.
Official statistics showed that one in seven people aged 16 and over in England and Wales had been a victim of stalking at least once, with women and younger people the most targeted.
Not all police forces tell people the identity of a stalker, with Phillips saying this lack of knowledge could be a “terrible added burden” to victims.
She told Times Radio: “I have been a victim of stalking, and I wasn’t told that. I didn’t have the right to know. And in most of the cases of my stalkers, they made it clear who they were as part of their desire to control and frighten me.”
Phillips also raised the case of Nicola Thorp, a broadcaster and campaigner on stalking, who did not learn the identity of her stalker until he appeared in court after police refused to tell her.
“And so everybody became her stalker – the person she was sat next to on the street – and already, when you’re living through something as harrowing as somebody stalking you and making you feel frightened and anxious, the idea that then you have to distrust all of the people around you as well just seems like a terrible added burden,” Phillips said.
The update to stalking protection orders would allow judges to bar convicted stalkers from contacting their victims while in prison, with Phillips saying this was “a very real thing” that had happened to her.
“I had somebody who was in prison for harming – well, seeking to harm me – and then was able to write letters to me, contact me from prison,” she told LBC radio, adding that she knew about “quite a lot of cases” where people’s ex-partners were able to stalk them online from prison.
More widely, Phillips said, ministers would look to see whether the current legislation on stalking which she said had been not notably updated for over a decade, is fit for purpose.
She said: “This raft of measures we’re announcing today is just the first steps, really, to trying to improve this situation.”
