Unsurprisingly, the papers and blawgers have been all over the story of Kylie McGrath, detained under the Mental Health Act after breaking into the home of solicitor Emma Eardley, whom McGrath had been stalking for over two years. McGrath began as Eardley’s client, but began a sustained campaign of stalking and harrassment apparently after Eardley turned down her ‘request for a relationship’, or as the Telegraph would have it, setting the tone for its article, her ‘romantic overtures.’
I must confess that this initially struck me as material for a ‘naughty step’ post, but after a very few moments reflection, I decided against it. The reasons why will become clear.
I haven’t seen or found any statistics on the degree of stalking of solicitors by clients, but I would be surprised if the figures weren’t quite high. Stalking in the population as whole is widespread. For instance, in the 1998 British Crime Survey (where the question was first asked), 11.8 per cent of adults aged 16 to 59 could recall being subject to persistent and unwanted attention at some time in their lives (16.1% women, 6.8% men). (I can’t get at the figures for 2001 and 2004, when the question was also asked, which is a pity as I was part of the 2001 BCS).
Some professionals are at increased risk of becoming the objects of stalking. The Australian Psychiatric Times notes
Professional victims (such as health care providers, lawyers and teachers, who come into contact with the lonely, the inadequate and the aggrieved) are particularly vulnerable.
See also this British study of stalking of healthcare professionals from 2006. In short, professionals in a situation that involves a supportive and confiding relationship with clients are at a higher risk of becoming targets than anyone outside personal relationship stalking.
The problem is that being stalked, or having a stalker, is usually regarded as either weird or amusing, or both. Witness the response to the McGrath story. There is also a strong but utterly fallacious assumption, perhaps via Fatal Attraction, that the victim has somehow done something to encourage the stalker.
The fact is that being stalked is at best disturbing or unsettling and leaves one anxious, depressed, even vaguely guilty. At worst, as the McGrath case indicates, there is a very real threat of violence.
So now for the confession. In my previous existence as an academic, I had a stalker. A mature student who was briefly in one of my lecture groups apparently decided that my lectures were coded messages to them declaring my love, and began writing me rather disturbing notes. Over the course of two years, the individual tracked down my ex-directory phone number (I know how) and my home address (I have no idea how – I assumed I had been followed) and then phoned or turned up on my doorstep, with waves of frequency.
The individual was, I thought and still think, fundamentally harmless, an erotomane convinced that their love was reciprocated. Friends and colleagues also received notes and calls, some accusatory, some asking for aid, some – presumably sent to perceived rivals – abusive.
There was no threat of violence, to me or others, but nonetheless the experience left me feeling anxious and depressed. At its peak, I could never relax, not knowing when they would next appear at my door, at home or work, and then just wait for hours when there was no answer. I felt at times I was being followed, often felt that I was being watched, and I feared that some accusation would be made against me professionally, which would have been potentially very difficult indeed.
It also left me feeling more than somewhat helpless. There is something quite terrifying about being the object of a delusion that quite simply ignores fact or reason, and weaves denial into ever more complicated schemes of paranoid justification. There was no-one, professionally or otherwise, who could assist and no point in involving the police as no crime had been committed. Asking the police to remove the person crying and wailing on my doorstep would not have got very far. Mental Health services wouldn’t touch the problem with a barge pole – I did ask.
It was a very difficult and unhappy period for me. But in comparison with the campaign suffered by Ms Eardley, it was nothing. She must have gone through hell.
Thankfully, nothing of the sort has happened to me since. But I strongly suspect that amongst legal aid or family/welfare lawyers there is a pretty high prevalence of being stalked, probably well over the national average mentioned above. I grant that the concepts of lawyers and of demented passion are not natural bedfellows, but we are not talking about a selection of the object of desire that is actually rational in any way here.
Of course, such incidents aren’t discussed – as far as I can tell not even informally – and when one hits the public view, it is in the form of stories which are salacious and the topic of jokes (I’m looking at you, geeklawyer).
Hence my confession. I realise it is spitting in the wind, but, having been there or thereabouts, I think that there is a need for the profession to take seriously both the risk of stalking for its members and the very serious effects it can have on the victims, even when there is no fear of violence. According to this report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists amongst those subject to stalking:
37% suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a similar proportion to that found in the victims of domestic violence. Nearly half the victims changed their job or moved away, and reported loss of work productivity and decreased social activity.
Sorry all, but it ain’t funny, even when it is, a bit.