John was in his early thirties when he was introduced to Maria. Ever since she has been obsessed — turning up at his home, following him at work, bombarding him with letters. It took years for the police to take him seriously and he still feels under siege.
Two minutes into the Netflix hit Baby Reindeer, John knew he couldn’t watch any more. The drama opens with Donny, the main character, hesitantly walking into a police station, stumbling over his words as he tries to explain he is being stalked by a woman. The scene swept John back to 1998 and the first time he tried to tell police in west London that he was being stalked.
“That could have been me on the TV, nervously going, ‘Hello, excuse me,’ " he says. “When I told the first officer I was like, ‘How can I say this… What do you do about someone constantly sending you mail and ringing your buzzer?’
“The copper said, ‘What do you mean?’
“I said, ‘There’s this woman, keeps knocking on my door — can you help me out, please?’
“He says, ‘What? Is it a girlfriend?’
“I said, ‘No.’
“He said, ‘There’s not a lot we can do, mate,’ and he started laughing. ‘Tell her to go away.’ And they laughed at me. They smiled and smirked behind their screen.”
Since then, for almost three decades, half his life, John feels he has been let down by a criminal justice system that has failed to stop that same woman from stalking him.
Maria, the stalker, has been jailed, sent to secure mental health facilities, electronically tagged and warned multiple times to stay away from him.
“But she’s like the seasons,” John says. “She just comes round again and again and again. Buzzing the door, knocking on the windows, writing letters — so many letters.” She has followed him to work; sat for hours on his doorstep waiting for him to return home; stationed herself in his local pub hoping he will show up.
I meet John just a few days before Maria is due to appear in court to be sentenced for the latest transgression of a restraining order that was imposed on her in 2002. The order prevents her contacting him “in any shape or form” and bars her from entering his street.
She has been convicted of breaching it on 15 occasions.
As we talk, his phone rings. It’s a withheld number. John never answers withheld numbers. Later we find out it was the witness support service at Westminster magistrates’ court. Shouldn’t they know that a stalking victim is never going to answer a withheld number? It’s yet another example, he says, of how the system fails to acknowledge the reality of what has happened to him.
Not once during the 27 years of his ordeal has John’s voice been heard in court. While his stalker has pleaded for leniency, represented by defence lawyers who seek sympathy because of her mental health problems, his story is unheard.
“I’m just a reference number somewhere. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know how broken I am. They keep passing judgment, finding solutions that are best for her, the person causing all the problems. But what about me? What are they going to give me to help my life go forward? I’m the one losing, every year.”
He hopes that is about to change. John has written a powerful victim impact statement and has been told he will be allowed to read it in court, from behind a screen, on the day Maria is sentenced.
John is a tall, lean, handsome black Londoner who looks far younger than his 59 years. He did some modelling in his youth, was in the Territorial Army, worked as a mentor with young offenders and still does Thai boxing to keep fit (and dissipate his anger).
But John is not his real name. He doesn’t want to be identified and he doesn’t want me to name the town where we meet. Maria doesn’t know where he is and he is determined to keep it that way.
He is fearful, insecure, worried. Being stalked for so long has robbed him of his poise, undermined his masculinity, destroyed relationships and sabotaged career and family prospects.
The night before he was to undergo the final assessment to become a firefighter, Maria arrived at his door. He was so distressed he withdrew from the test. He was sacked from another job because he had so many stress-related absences. John was too embarrassed to explain what had been happening in his life.
I remember one guy said to me, ‘I wouldn’t mind a woman stalking me.’ I said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’
He’s still embarrassed and fearful.
“When people take pictures and post them on social media I say, ‘Don’t put my name on it. Don’t say where I am.’ If she finds out where I am… Every night I’m waking up. I know in my heart I can’t take it any more.”
As he recounts the years of harassment and the toll they have taken, he ricochets unpredictably between seething anger and tears. He is constantly trying to keep rage and despair in check. Talking about this does not come easy. He says he hasn’t told his partner of eight years everything. Yet.
“It hits me hard when I talk about it. The hardest part is that I haven’t done anything to anyone. I just want my life back; I just want to be normal again. I go out sometimes, I pretend I’m OK. I come home and I might be a bit juiced. But I wake up the next day and I’m thinking, ‘S***.’ It’s just difficult.
“The impact on a woman of being stalked is well known, but nobody understands when I tell them that I’m being stalked by a woman. I remember one guy said to me, ‘I wouldn’t mind a woman stalking me.’ I said, ‘Wouldn’t you?’
“It has taken away a part of me that I know I will never get back again. That confidence, that strength. I’m just breathing. Am I going to be living this again and again for the next 10 years until I kick the bucket?
“I did modelling when I was young and I couldn’t do it any more because I wasn’t confident in myself. I used to draw and paint — I don’t do that any more.
“I got myself in so much debt because I couldn’t pay my bills, I couldn’t pay my rent. But nobody understood what I was going through — there was no support. The only person who helped me was my GP.”
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which runs the national stalking helpline, defines it 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 charity says stalking is “a highly complex crime that can include many types of unwanted behaviour such as regularly sending flowers or gifts, repeated or malicious communication, damaging property and physical or sexual assault. Stalking is a crime of psychological terror and can lead to feelings of depression, anxiety, paranoia, self-harm and eating disorders.”
One in five women and one in 10 men experience stalking in their lifetimes. Many victims experience symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The national helpline receives about 600 calls every month from people seeking help; 13 per cent of those victims are men. The charity says some 17 per cent of stalking perpetrators identify as female.
Academic studies say that while male stalkers are often trying to reclaim an intimate relationship, female stalkers are usually trying to establish intimacy with the object of their fixation. More than half (55%) of stalking perpetrators go on to reoffend, and more than a third (36%) have a previous conviction for harassment. The complex psychological problems that go hand in hand with stalking are often beyond the capabilities of the criminal justice system.
Legislation attempting to tackle stalking was passed in the UK in 1997, strengthened in 2012 and upgraded again in 2019, but charities are concerned the seriousness of the offence is still not appreciated.
Only 5% of stalking reports to the police result in a charge being pursued, while successful convictions are obtained in just 1.7% of cases. Anti-stalking groups believe the police and the courts are not using all the powers available to them. The take-up of stalking protection orders, which can be used to impose behaviour conditions on perpetrators, has been poor. Anti-stalking charities have lodged what’s known as a super-complaint — a mechanism for raising issues in the public interest — which is being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
John says he was helped by Paladin, an advocacy service for victims. The charity says victims like John are often left feeling “dismissed and misunderstood when reporting stalking to the police”.
A spokeswoman for Paladin says, “This often presents an additional barrier for stalking victims coming forward to make further reports to the police, even when the stalking behaviours are escalating and the risk of harm is increasing. In turn, this puts stalking victims at increased risk of physical and psychological harm.”
John was 32 and enjoying a lazy afternoon in his local pub, drinking beer and playing pinball with a group of mates, when his life changed for the worse.
A friend turned up with a woman called Maria, who joined their company. John says he did not pay her much attention.
Over the next few months she kept on turning up, usually sitting on a table near John’s group. Sometimes she would sit looking at them; other times she would try to join them.
John’s mates told him she had “eyes on” him, but he made it clear he wasn’t interested in her. He had recently come to the difficult end of a six-year relationship and wanted to be on his own.
One evening he was at home, planning for an early night because he had to work first thing the next morning, when his door buzzer sounded. It was Maria. She wanted to come in. She said she had lost her keys and had nowhere to sleep.
She made me slip. I started taking a lot of drugs. I couldn’t work properly or keep a job.
He refused to let her in. She came back three more times and about midnight John cracked and opened the door. He told her she could have his bed for the night and he laid cushions on the floor for himself.
At 6am he awoke to find the woman beside him with an arm draped across his body. He was angry. He told her to leave. She said she wanted him — she wanted to have sex with him.
He says he gave in and they had quick, unhappy, functional sex. Then he told her to leave.
“She left and I felt sick with myself. I felt… [he hesitates before choosing the right word] violated.
“I felt really disgusted,” John adds. “I felt I’d done the worst thing ever but I thought that was it — it was over. Instead, it got worse. She just kept on turning up at the pub, following me and my friends.
“Then one day when I was working for a delivery business, I was up near St Paul’s and I was just about to get out of the van when I stopped dead in my tracks. I said to my workmate, ‘Look, see that girl there — she’s the stalker. She’s been stalking me.’ He started laughing. I told him the story and he couldn’t believe it.”
In 1998, he had been seeing a new girlfriend for a few weeks. They were leaving his flat when Maria appeared. “I was with him last night,” the stalker told his girlfriend. It was a lie. His girlfriend urged him to go to the police. “You’re being stalked,” she told him.
The officers he first approached at Earls Court police station laughed it off. John says he left the station feeling angry and humiliated. The following year he went back to the police. And again the year after that.
“I kept on going to the police. I had to plead with them — ‘Please help me with this because I don’t know what to do.’ She kept on coming; she kept on knocking; she kept on sending me letters.”
Eventually, he encountered an officer who understood. In March 2002, Horseferry Road magistrates’ court issued a restraining order against Maria under the Prevention from Harassment Act 1997.
It specified that between August 2001 and January 2002 Maria had “pursued a course of conduct which amounted to the harassment of [John] and which you knew or ought to have known amounted to harassment”.
After police interventions, the harassment would often abate. Then Maria would re-enter his life. She would bombard him with letters or call at the door of his basement flat.
“She’d walk down the stairs, she’d be knocking on the window, trying to open it; buzzing on the buzzer, calling my name. ‘Are you in. Are you in? I can hear you. Can I come in?’
“I would have to keep quiet and hide and wait for her to go away. I used to hide in my house. She’d be out there for hours — sitting on the step. Sometimes I’d find her sitting there waiting for me to come home from work.
“I’d call the police to take her away. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve called the police.”
Maria was jailed in 2007 and later moved to a mental health facility from which she became “a serial absconder”. A police letter from that year documents how she had been bailed to a mental health unit while awaiting sentence, but had gone missing and police could not locate her.
“The fact she has mental health issues makes it more difficult for her to be held to account for her behaviour within the law,” an officer wrote.
John feels his stalker’s mental health is always the priority issue for the authorities. His well-being, in contrast, is neglected. “She made me slip. I went into a really bad patch. I started taking a lot of drugs; I started hanging out with some undesirables. I wanted to escape… I had to escape, some way, somehow. I couldn’t work properly. I couldn’t keep a job.”
He was prescribed antidepressants and at one point, after taking cocaine and smoking skunk — strong cannabis — he crushed the tablets into a powder with the intention of ending his life. He was saved when a friend turned up unexpectedly.
“He thought it was coke and when I told him what it was he just swept it away with the back of his hand,” John recalls. “He said, ‘Don’t do it, man,’ and he gave me a hug.”
It feels like there is no one out there who understands how this has mentally and physically broken me.
In August 2010, Maria was jailed for two years. On her release, she began stalking John again. In 2017 she was before the courts once more. The stalking stopped for a while. John has only recently discovered that she was given a hospital order by the courts. That order was later relaxed to a community treatment order.
John applied to his landlord, the Peabody Trust, to be rehoused to escape the harassment. Despite the trust having a raft of anti-harassment and antisocial behaviour policies, his request was not granted. John says that, for peace of mind, he has been forced to spend more and more time away from his home.
Peabody says John is now on its priority list for rehousing. “We haven’t acted quickly enough and we’re very sorry. We know this is an incredibly difficult and challenging situation.”
Neighbours tell John that when he was away from his flat, Maria would still call repeatedly at the door. Last November the mail began arriving again, with a flurry of letters in familiar handwriting. His partner read them and called the police.
Maria was arrested, then released on bail. Despite bail conditions that include a curfew, an electronic tag and a ban on contacting him, she kept on writing.
John fetches a box of paperwork on top of the fridge. He produces an envelope. There’s a scrawl, all in capital letters — inside there’s another envelope instead of writing paper.
The note is dated March 12, 2024.
“How are you?” it begins. “I can’t stop thinking of you. How are you? I’m sorry that I kept on making you call the Feds.
“I didn’t think you would care if I was arrested. I love you. Please forgive me Angel. Please meet me on Thursday, March 14, outside Earls Court station at 6pm.
“We need to get back together because we need each other. We need to talk. I want to be your woman. I can’t live without you any more. Please forgive me. I love you too much.”
He shows me another envelope on the back of which she has written, “Please open with lots of love. To my mirror image and my destiny.”
“I haven’t read it,” John says. “I can’t read any of them any more — they give me the shakes. I can’t believe this person is still like this after so long. I can’t believe this is still happening.”
A week after we first meet, I am with John and his partner at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Marylebone Road, which also hosts the first hearings in many high-profile terrorism and extradition cases.
John arrives early to avoid bumping into Maria. Witness support volunteers take him to a room where he can wait to be called to deliver his statement.
The defendant takes her place in the dock. The witness box is ready, with a curtain drawn to stop John from being seen by anyone except the magistrates.
But his opportunity doesn’t arise. The magistrates decide the case is too serious for their sentencing powers and should be referred to a crown court. It leaves John with mixed emotions — he feels the case is being taken seriously but is frustrated.
The case is relisted for July 5, the morning after the general election, at Isleworth Crown Court. On polling day, however, John is told the hearing has been delayed again until Monday 15.
Then, on Friday the 12th, an email arrives telling him the case has been put off again. It asks if there are any dates “over the following 12 months” when John might be unavailable. The adjournment is “a defence request which was granted”.
John is distressed and furious. Once again the justice system has betrayed him, put the needs of the stalker above those of the victim, left her on the streets and him always looking over his shoulder.
“It feels like there is no one out there who understands how this has mentally and physically broken me,” he says. “I am long overdue some justice.”
Written by: Sean O’Neill
© The Times of London