Author Cally Taylor (Image: )<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n I can still remember sitting in the pitch black in my living room, the curtains drawn, too scared to move. As the doorbell rang non-stop with a piercing wail, I could see my phone light up with a flood of text messages. \u201cI know you\u2019re in there,\u201d they said. \u201cI heard you moving around inside.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifteen years ago, I was stalked by a controlling and coercive ex-boyfriend. The experience was so terrifying that I went into hiding, both online and in real life, by moving out of my flat.<\/p>\n But even then, as too many other victims of stalkers will know, I wasn\u2019t safe. Not even after I had uprooted my life and moved from London to Brighton.<\/p>\n Because, after he discovered where I was, my ex followed me. Now he was standing outside in the rain, his finger pressed to the bell, his sinister words on my phone, letting me know that I could never escape him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sadly, there are many others who have been subjected to similarly terrifying ordeals. In recent years, stalking has steadily been on the rise. Official statistics show that, in the UK in 2023, there were 678,746 stalking and harassment offences.<\/p>\n Much of this is down to an increase in cyberstalking, in which perpetrators use the internet and electronic devices to track and harass their victims online.<\/p>\n The National Stalking Helpline last year reported a 20 per cent rise in complaints about this offence since the start of the pandemic. It says, in conjunction with the personal safety charity The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, that cyberstalking \u201cshould be treated as seriously as stalking\u201d.<\/p>\n And I wholeheartedly agree, based on my experience alone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n READ MORE… <\/strong> How Stakeknife became Britain\u2019s top IRA spy <\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n At first there were phone calls \u2013 dozens of them, my phone ringing all day and all night. I\u2019d turn it off only to discover multiple voicemails and text messages when I turned it back on.<\/p>\n Some were loving, some were accusatory, so many told me I\u2019d never find love again.<\/p>\n It was an assault, a bombardment of words. My ex started ringing my landline, which I unplugged. Letters followed, and cards, with photos of the two of us in \u201chappier times\u201d pasted inside. I received flowers and presents, all consigned to the bin. That\u2019s when he started turning up outside my flat in Brighton.<\/p>\n My sister and her then partner offered me refuge in their flat. He knew where I lived but not where they lived. I moved into their spare room and asked my boss to change my schedule, but I was still terrified each time I commuted to work.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At no point did I think about going to the police. Back in 2009 they only became involved if victims of stalking were being openly threatened and my ex preferred to torture me mentally.<\/p>\n As weeks ticked by into months, each day brought with it new fear. What tactic would he try next? Each time I blocked his emails, he would create a new email account.<\/p>\n He used the contact form on my website and sent me so many messages that I had to take it down. When loneliness drove me to join two online dating services, he tracked down my profiles and messaged me. He copied my profile, making his a male carbon copy of mine. He found my secret Twitter account and turned up at a gig I was attending. He found blog posts I\u2019d commented on and tried to hack into my email and Facebook accounts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My ex was an IT professional, and savvy, but there was one thing he didn\u2019t know about. I had a hidden web-counter device on my website that provided me with statistics: how many people visited my website each day; how many times they\u2019d visited; the details of their internet provider address.<\/p>\n Because I\u2019d logged onto my website from my ex\u2019s flat, I knew his IP address. His work IP address showed up with the company\u2019s name. Some days I\u2019d log into the web-counter and see that he was looking at my website at that precise moment. It was unnerving, but also strangely reassuring. If he was checking out my website from London, then I was safe to leave my Brighton flat. It was the only control I had.<\/p>\n And control is something I wanted to give back to victims of stalking when I wrote my psychological thriller Every Move You Make.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The story is about five female friends who are united by their experience of stalking. After one member is killed and the rest receive a threatening message, the women decide to reverse the tables by becoming stalkers themselves. I chose to arm them with a different kind of technology by giving them trackers to place on each other\u2019s stalkers. I gave them hope. But just like real life, even the best laid plans can go wrong.<\/p>\n Prior to my experience, I would never have believed I would become a victim of stalking. There is still much confusion and misunderstanding around it. Recently I re-read a diary entry dating back to six months into that relationship.<\/p>\n It read: \u201cI can\u2019t stand this stepping on eggshells until he finds something else to start an argument about. He tells me that I\u2019ll never find anyone that loves me as much as he does. That may well be true, but I\u2019ll also never find anyone so judgemental, someone who has so many constraints to their love.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Most people will wonder why on earth I stayed as long as I did. But what\u2019s not immediately obvious is the spell that emotionally abusive men can weave. Before things deteriorated, I thought I had met my soulmate. And it took me another three-and-a-half years after writing that diary entry before I had left for good.<\/p>\n At the start, my ex called me \u201cangel\u201d, \u201cdarling\u201d and \u201ckitten\u201d.<\/p>\n He told me he\u2019d never met anyone like me; that he\u2019d been waiting all his life to meet me; that I was amazing, beautiful, intelligent and unique. Being around him made the world feel magical, like I was living in a Hollywood film. I didn\u2019t want to be apart from him because I felt like I\u2019d found what I\u2019d spent my whole life searching for, and I knew he felt the same. Over time he began to criticise me. He\u2019d raise an eyebrow at how much I\u2019d drunk the previous weekend. He\u2019d ask how many men I\u2019d slept with and judge me on the answer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He\u2019d tell me my friends weren\u2019t as beautiful, intelligent or interesting as me and ask why I hung out with them.<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t take those criticisms sitting down. I fought back. I argued, I ended the relationship. But controlling men don\u2019t like it when their girlfriends take control, so he\u2019d call me or come round.<\/p>\n There was always an excuse for his behaviour \u2013 he was suffering from depression; his ex-girlfriend had destroyed his confidence; he\u2019d pushed me away because he didn\u2019t think he deserved me.<\/p>\n He\u2019d remind me of the good times together and, because I was desperate to return to the magical early days of our relationship, I\u2019d give him another chance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But then, just as I\u2019d start to relax, under the illusion that we were back to being happy, he\u2019d start up with the questions again. He\u2019d accuse me of lying.<\/p>\n He said I had slept with my exes, my colleagues or a random man at a bus stop who had smiled at me. Then I\u2019d resolve to leave him. Again. He would change tack, pushing at my weak spots to win me back. He\u2019d tell me that no other man would find me as desirable as he did; that he was planning on buying an engagement ring and proposing; that we could have children.<\/p>\n Everything he told me was a lie but, by that point, I didn\u2019t know what was real anymore. On the day I was due to move in with him, something inside me snapped. He\u2019d just sent me an abusive text message on the day I was giving up everything to be with him. My crime? In my hurry to get to work, I hadn\u2019t kissed him goodbye. I decided right then to end the relationship and I resolved never to answer another of his phone calls, texts or emails. He\u2019d never, ever talk me into going back to him. That\u2019s when the stalking began.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I was what I suppose you could call lucky. My ex stopped stalking me when my father threatened to report him to the police. But there are many stalkers who can\u2019t and won\u2019t stop, regardless of cautions, restraining orders, or even prison.<\/p>\n In a university study, stalking was present in 94 per cent of the 358 cases of criminal homicides. Surveillance activity, including covert watching, was recorded 63 per cent of the time.<\/p>\n Stalking and harassment legislation has become more stringent since I was a victim of stalking but, still, less than two per cent of reports to police end in conviction. That\u2019s unacceptable. Something has to be done. Until then, victims will continue to be harassed, hounded and powerless.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] Author Cally Taylor (Image: ) I can still remember sitting in the pitch black in my living room, the curtains drawn, too scared to move. As the doorbell rang non-stop with a piercing wail, I could see my phone light up with a flood of text messages. \u201cI know you\u2019re in there,\u201d they said. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[763],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35290"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35290\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Author](\"https:\/\/cdn.images.express.co.uk\/img\/dynamic\/130\/590x\/secondary\/Author-Cally-Taylor-5309278.jpg?r=1712599089400\" "\\"Author")
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