A law that could make ‘stalkers’ of us all
Tessa Mayes says that the crime of harassment is not being prevented by legislation which enables the police to issue warnings to people when they have simply had a quarrel ‘S talker’ has become a joke word in some quarters. A woman who complains of being stalked often means no more than that she is receiving unwanted attention from a former casual lover or perhaps a long-term partner she has just dumped. Some women even refer affectionately to their ‘stalkers’.
Real harassment is a serious matter, of course. Under the Protection from Harassment Act (1997) — the law covering stalking — it is recognised that harassment by stalkers can involve the threat of violence. Nobody feels affectionately toward those who threaten them with violence. But too often the law is being applied absurdly — with the inevitable result that harassment cases are often thrown out.
This year the TV star Michelle Collins was accused of harassment after allegedly being abusive to a woman on the phone. She was issued with a warning by police and the case wasn’t pursued. A few years ago a man was accused of harassment after trying to flirt with a fellow commuter on a train. He was acquitted. But a woman won £800,000 in damages from Deutsche Bank after a judge ruled she had not been protected by her employer from workplace bullies and their harassment.
People are using the Act to try to solve their personal problems, too. For example, a 22-year-old woman was taken to court for harassment by her father after their relationship broke down following the death of her mother. The daughter was found not guilty. A mother and father were charged with the harassment of their daughter following a disagreement about her marriage. They were cleared on appeal.
Next week a man will appear in Bradford Crown Court to appeal against his conviction after making rude hand gestures at his neighbours and playing a fart machine over several years. He may be a social irritant, but it is hard to see why he should face potential restrictions on his movements for several years, or the prospect of five years in prison and/or an unlimited fine if he breaches an injunction.
An increasing number of harassment complaints are being made to the police, plenty of them petty, and some dishonest. In 2005–2006, the police recorded 218,817 incidents of ‘harassment’, more than double the number recorded five years before. Yet only 680 people were found guilty of actually putting people ‘in fear of violence’ in 2004.
The blame for the mess in our stalking laws lies with New Labour. The original intention of Parliament has been ignored, and the 1997 Act has been extended several times to apply to groups as well as individuals who harass people. The position now is that individuals who commit an act only once (the original legal definition of harassment was to commit an act twice) can also be convicted — if they are part of a group responsible for the behaviour.
‘It’s a whole process of mission creep,’ Malcolm Fowler, a member of the Law Reform Board at the Law Society and a solicitor, told me. ‘Ten years ago the Law Society was told that ministers would never dream of using it [the 1997 Act] for these sorts of purposes.’ But the Act was misconceived from the start. It defines harassment as two or more acts of behaviour causing alarm or distress which a ‘reasonable person’ would agree is harassment. Behaviour that counts as harassment is also defined on the basis of whether the victim feels alarmed, distressed or fears violence and on whether the perpetrator knows or ought to know that the victim feels that way. It is supposed to fill a legal gap, applying to situations where individual acts are not in themselves necessarily that bad and can’t always be prosecuted, but where the repetitive nature of the act is unpleasant or threatening to a victim. Yet critics argue that the law is too vague. Any repetitive behaviour could feel like ‘psychological assault’ to one person yet be acceptable to, or laughed off by, another.
It’s no laughing matter for some of the victims, of course. They can feel in danger and go through years of debilitating anguish. Take the 1996 case of Tracey Morgan. Her case is cited as resulting in the establishment of the Act. She was stalked for nine years by Anthony Burstow, a former close friend.
Yet basing legislation on extreme cases doesn’t necessarily make for a good and just law. To victims — and those campaigning on behalf of victims — it may feel as if the law doesn’t do enough. But many may wonder whether the law was necessary in the first place. After all, there are plenty of laws dealing with all kinds of harassment — among them the Offences Against the Person Act (1861), the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) and the Malicious Communications Act (1998).
Proponents of the Harassment Act tend to cite cases of physical violence or murder to show how potentially dangerous stalkers can be. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust and the Network for Surviving Stalking (NSS) campaign to raise awareness of stalkers and to toughen penalties against them including, a few years ago, proposing psychiatric testing for all suspects arrested under the Act. A Home Office Research Study published in 2001 notes that one of the advantages of the Act is that it allows intervention before harm results.
All this raises the spectre that anyone who bothers you is a potential murderer. Not only is this fear-mongering; it also skews justice towards a Minority Report type of law-making. People are being penalised not just for what they’ve done but — as the science-fiction movie portrayed — what their behaviour today suggests they might do in the future.
The situation is not improved by the new, light-touch harassment warnings police can issue. It sounds benign — at least the police aren’t investigating every complaint as a criminal matter. But as a result, people are receiving warnings even when they’ve done nothing wrong. Furthermore, a Chief Police Officer may, at his discretion, mention the harassment warning to the Criminal Records Bureau if they request ‘soft information’ about an individual. A potential employer could interpret the warning reference as ‘stalker’ (and who wants to employ one of those?) when you might only have had a silly quarrel with your neighbours about their overgrown hedges.
Who’s stalking whom here? Isn’t it time to get rid of this law?
Previous page
