Stalking and coercive control are crimes that are insidious and terrifying and yet many still do not understand them. They are patterned crimes and the abuser goes from victim to victim.
Often the perpetrators are male and the victims are female. Sadly, there are many cases where the entitled male abuser escalates to murder and, despite clear warning signs, their violent history was not joined up by police, prisons and probation services. We have to change this.
Kirsty Treloar and Jane Clough were abused and brutally murdered by serial perpetrators.
Kirsty was just 20 years old when she was stalked and stabbed to death. She had given birth to a beautiful baby girl three weeks before she was killed by Myles Williams, a man who she said she never wanted to see again. He was coercively controlling and violent to Kirsty and he had abused other women. Sentencing Williams, Judge Nicholas Cooke said: 'Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you represent an exceptional danger to any future female partners’.
Jane met Jonathan Vass at work. She was an A&E nurse and he was an ambulance technician. Jane was just 26 years-old when she died. Nine months earlier she had a baby girl and the abuse escalated whilst she was pregnant. When he raped her in front of the baby, she knew she had to leave him. She ended the relationship and told police that he had raped and beaten her, but he was granted bail while facing nine counts of rape and four of assaults. He waited three months to access Jane. She had stopped going out as she was scared he was going to find her and kill her. As she became more isolated she used Facebook to talk to people and he stalked her by monitoring her account. When she eventually returned to work, he lay in wait in the hospital car park and stabbed her 71 times.
Jane and Kirsty could have been saved if their serial abusers were on a register and being managed and monitored. Currently the histories of violent and abusive men are not being joined up. The focus tends to be on the victim and people ask 'why do you stay' rather than 'how do we stop him'.
People with a history of domestic abuse and stalking are dangerous just like sex offenders and terrorists.
We must make violent men visible and accountable and you can help. This is everybody's business.
We need to act now to save lives by protecting women from serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators by extending the Multi-agency Public Protection Arrangements to ensure that police, prison and probation services pro-actively identify, track, monitor and manage serial perpetrators.
We need a cultural shift which will only be obtained through law change, one where we treat stalking and domestic abuse with the seriousness it deserves.
Please help us to make sure that we protect other women so other families do not go through what the Everards, Nessas, Van Hagens, Cloughs, Treloars, Ruggles, Gazzards, Kezas, Reeces, Mcdermotts, McLarens, Bests and many many more have.
What YOU can do to help:
Write to your MP and the Home Secretary Priti Patel and ask that they/she focus on male violence against women and the men who abuse, rape and kill women.
Follow us on social media and amplify our voices for change @laurarichards99 Twitter, IG @laurarichards999 and Laura Richards Facebook.
Share this petition and ask others to sign and share.
Together we can create real change to better protect women and girls.
Thank you.
Laura Richards, Founder Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service
