Police will be able to reveal the identity of online stalkers under new “right to know” powers, the government has announced.
The change has been inspired by the experience of ex-Coronation Street actress and broadcaster Nicola Thorp, who was abused by a man online who set up almost 30 social media accounts to send her violent misogynistic messages.
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Police said they could not reveal the identity of the offender even after he was arrested – despite the perpetrator once saying he had got so close to Ms Thorp on a train he “could smell” her.
The man, who called himself The Grim Reaper in some of his messages, is currently serving a 30-month prison sentence with a lifetime restraining order handed down in court – the first time she learned his true identity.
She didn’t know what he looked like even after she was granted a stalking protection order ahead of his trial, The Times previously reported, so she wouldn’t have been able to raise the alarm if he broke it.
The government said it will issue new ‘right to know’ statutory guidance to empower the police to release the identity of an online stalker at the earliest opportunity, setting out the process for disclosure more clearly to officers.
The measure was welcomed by Ms Thorp, who has been working with the government to grant stalking victims more protection.
She said: “For too long, stalking victims have been at the mercy not only of their stalker but a justice system that failed to protect them.
“These new measures will empower victims to regain some much-needed control of their lives and police to bring abusers to justice.”
The government has also announced that Stalking Protection Orders – which ban perpetrators from going within a certain distance of their victims or contacting them – will also be made more widely available.
The new approach will see courts able to impose such orders after a conviction even where none was in place before a trial, contrary to the current process where one has to have been in place already.
This will stop offenders from contacting their victims from prison, the Home Office said.
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Courts will also be able to directly impose protection orders on those who have been acquitted if there is enough evidence to suggest that they are still a risk to the victim.
Other changes include a new legal framework to help local services work together to ensure no-one is failed by information falling through the cracks.
The Home Office will also set out national standards on stalking perpetrator programmes to ensure consistency across England and Wales.
The package of measures follows a warning earlier this year from a group of watchdogs who said police are failing to protect stalking victims in too many cases.
Around one in seven people aged 16 and over in England and Wales have been a victim of stalking at least once, figures suggest.
Announcing the measures, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called stalking a “horrendous crime”.
She added: “Let us be clear, we will use every tool available to us to give more power to victims and take it away from the hands of their abusers.”
