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This year marks the 40th anniversary of Suzy Lamplugh’s disappearance and presumed murder, the charity the Suzy Lamplugh Trust said to mark stalking awareness week, last week. The charity says that the risks posed by stalking including potential escalation to homicide and victim suicide, in all contexts, and particularly those that do not fall under the definition of domestic abuse, require greater recognition and awareness nationally.
Emma Lingley-Clark, Interim Chief Executive Officer of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, called for ‘urgent, systemic change’ to ensure stalking is prioritised in line with the risk it poses. She said: “Stalking behaviours must be consistently recorded wherever they have contributed to homicide or suicide, so we can fully recognise their role in the escalation to fatal harm.
“Nine years on from raising this during National Stalking Awareness Week 2017, serious failings in the protection of victims persist, as highlighted in our super-complaint on the police response to stalking. We know stalking can escalate into fatal fixation, yet across public bodies and agencies it continues to be dangerously under-estimated — rather than treated with the urgency it demands.
“If the Government is serious about its commitment to halve violence against women and girls it must mandate specialist independent training for criminal justice professionals working on stalking cases and ensure that stalking is included in the ‘Steps to Safety’ training programme for healthcare professionals. Failure to do so will continue to cost lives.”
For more, visit the Trust’s website.
Comment
For the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners (APCC) Joint Leads for Victims, PCCs Clare Moody and Matthew Scott, PCCs for Avon and Somerset and Kent respectively, said: ““PCCs remain committed to working with partners across policing, government and the wider sector to consolidate the response to stalking, ensuring victims’ and survivors’ experiences continue to shape the system.”
Definition
Stalking is defined by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust as a pattern of fixated and obsessive behaviour which is repeated, persistent, intrusive and causes fear of violence or engenders alarm and distress in the victim. The behaviours can be offline (such as visiting the victim’s home or place of work, following the victim or leaving gifts) or online (such as unwanted social media communication, calls, texts, emails, hacking and spyware). Stalking approximately affects one in five women and one in 13 men in their lifetimes. Last year, the Trust says, about 1.4 million adults (aged 16 and over) were victims of stalking in England and Wales. Visit: https://www.suzylamplugh.org/what-is-stalking.
