Victims welcome new crackdown on internet stalking

Campaigners and victims have welcomed a crackdown on internet stalking.

New advice to courts should mean police and prosecutors take the crime more seriously and get involved earlier.

"This will give victims the confidence to come forward," said Alexis Bowater from the Network for Surviving Stalking.

"It sends out the message that the authorities understand what they are going through and are completely on their side."

New guidance from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) will encourage judges to issue restraining orders banning stalkers from targeting specific people on sites like Facebook and YouTube.

The British Crime Survey shows more than a million women and 900,000 men are stalked and harassed every year.

But campaigners say that number might miss the many thousands threatened and harassed on email, social networking sites or their mobile phone.

'Underestimated'

When Elle was sent an offensive message on a music forum, she reported it to the site manager and the poster was banned.

But the abuse didn't stop. The harassment followed her on other sites getting progressively more serious until finally she started receiving serious death threats.

At the height of the problem Elle was being sent 20 to 30 messages a day, with new email addresses being set up as soon as an old one was blocked.

But Elle, who worked in the music industry, says she couldn't hide her online profile as she used websites to promote her music.

She reported the abuse to the police, but was met with "baffled looks" when she asked them to track the person and find the individual Internet Protocol, or IP address, of the person involved.

"At that moment, I felt very scared," she told Newsbeat. "I felt very alone. My family and friends were supportive, but I don't think they understood the actual depth of what was going on and how serious it was.

"You do get told, 'Oh well, just turn the computer off, you know, don't use the internet', which is a bit ridiculous."

Elle says she continued to report new abuse to the police for three years, but it was her boyfriend in 2008 who advised her to keep and log the messages as evidence.

"So I painstakingly logged all of the actual abuse - dates, times, usernames - I mean, hundreds and hundreds of profiles they made," she said.

"The person seemed to know about some aspects of my personal life - friends, family, that sort of thing.

"It was scary sitting constantly rereading messages that were threatening my life and were really offensive and very upsetting.

"It sent me into a very serious downward spiral of depression during the time."

'More research'

The breakthrough came when Elle received a message on the Friends Reunited site that finally revealed the abuser's real name.

Elle contacted the person's father and was told his daughter was banned from using the computer in the house.

Psychologists say some people behave very differently while on the internet

He advised Elle to go to the police.

"As soon as I mentioned the name [to the police]," she says, "they knew who it was immediately."

The 29-year-old stalker was arrested in November 2009 but because of her poor mental health and learning difficulties, she couldn't be prosecuted.

The police said there was nothing they could do but assured Elle that the stalker had been warned and she wouldn't do anything else.

But months later she found the stalker had breached her caution conditions by posing as her on iTunes and posting threats under her name.

The person was rearrested in August 2010 and fined.

Campaigners say much more research is now needed into the extent and nature of harassment and stalking on websites and mobile phones.

Psychologist Doctor Emma Short says many people behave differently on the internet, post personal information they wouldn't release offline and underestimate the impact of their actions on other users.

"It may be cyberstalking takes different forms and has different risks associated with it than standard stalking," she said. "So far there has been no real analysis of the problem."

Dr Short is now working with the Network for Surviving Stalking on a 12 month project to research the problem.

Cyberstalking victims are being asked to fill out an anonymous survey about their views and experiences.