Minister for safeguarding unveils measures including ‘right to know’, ensuring police tell victims the identity of online stalkers as soon as they canUnder the package of anti-stalking measures announced today, the courts will be able to impose stalking protection orders on people in prison. Explaining why this was needed, Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls, told LBC:Judges will be able to hand out stalking protection orders to people on conviction, which they currently can’t do, which will stop people being stalked by people in prison, which I’m afraid to say, is a very real thing, and it happened to me,.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.I think that for most victims, what you try and do is diminish it at first. You try and assume that … it’s just one of those things where it’s somebody who keeps showing advances towards you, or, you know, you live rent-free in someone’s head when you’re a politician, until the point at which it ramps up and it begins to control you. And I’m a person with quite a lot of power. So these, these crimes are usually about power and control.I have been a victim of stalking, and I wasn’t told [the identity of the stalker]. 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. I’m afraid to say that I’ve had more than one in my life.This was a case raised by Nicola Thorp, where somebody had been stalking her over multiple identities online, and when they said the police told her that they’d found out who it was, they then told her that they couldn’t tell her who it was.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 … and so that is what we’re going to eliminate. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/dec/03/jess-phillips-stalking-protection-measures-violence-women-girls-labour-conservatives-uk-politics-latest-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2024-12-03 09:36:57
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Jess Phillips announces measures to give stalking victims more protection – UK politics live
