Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I welcome from the Multi-Agency Stalking Project (MASP) Ms Shonagh Dillon, chief executive officer of Aurora New Dawn; Dr Kirsty Butcher, chartered principal clinical psychologist and clinical lead; and Ms Victoria Tunbridge, chartered principal forensic psychologist and clinical lead. You are all very welcome. The session will be reported by Hansard and published on the Committee page in due course. I will hand over to Shonagh to provide us with an overview of the key issues, and then we will turn to members for questions. Thank you, Shonagh.

Ms Shonagh Dillon (Aurora New Dawn): Thank you. Stalking is often described by our clients as terrifying and intrusive.

Often, victims feel a sense of loss of control and privacy, which often has long-term, negative impacts in many areas of their lives. At Aurora, we use the definition of stalking from our colleagues at the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, who run the national stalking helpline:

We also think of it as:

Stalking is a unique and often seemingly bizarre crime that occurs outside the context of a relationship. It is driven by the stalker's obsession with and fixation on their victim. Whilst we often see similar behaviour in abusive relationships where digital and physical monitoring behaviours are present, stalking occurs where there is no relationship. Stalking can start after the end of a relationship. However, for the victim, the relationship is no longer there. The stalker tries to impose a relationship and contact on their victim regardless of whether the victim wants it.

It is also important to understand that not all stalking is perpetrated by ex-partners. There are many reasons why someone might stalk someone else. Although nearly 90% of our victims are stalked by an ex-intimate partner, we extend our service to all victims of stalking, because an offender can be a stranger or a previous friend, patient, colleague, neighbour or acquaintance. It is argued that the implementation of stalking legislation is essential to protect victims from the psychologically pervasive, dangerous and, sometimes, tragically, fatal crimes.

However, it is important to note, however, that legislative frameworks are just the start of the conversation in the response that is needed to prevent stalking. Any change in legislation needs to be supported by training, culture change and adequate funding to support statutory responses, including, for example, by criminal justice and health agencies. Most importantly, from Aurora's perspective, it is essential that additional, sustainable funding be provided for independent, specialist male-violence-against-women sector organisations to respond to the needs of victims.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): OK. Thank you, Shonagh. I have just a couple of questions. The multi-agency project is funded by the Government: are there other similar projects in England and Wales?

Ms S Dillon: Yes, there are four now. I will refer to Kirsty and Victoria. The first three were in Hampshire and Cheshire and with the Met police. There is an additional one now, but I have forgotten where it is; I can ask Kirsty and Victoria. It is not funded by central Government now; it is locally funded. There are different pockets of funding for different areas of the stalking response in Hampshire.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): OK. Thank you. I will bring in Sinéad Bradley.

Ms S Bradley: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Shonagh, Kirsty and Victoria.

Can you elaborate on something that you said about the relationship between the stalker and the person being stalked? Are you saying that there is no relationship there, by definition, and that a relationship is imposed? I ask because the proposed legislation is not as prescriptive about the relationship as that. Does a stalker exclusively have to be someone who is not in a relationship with the victim?

Ms S Dillon: I am talking about how it feels for the victim; I am talking about it from the perspective of a victims' advocate. It is the imposition of a relationship. It can be, and very often is, an ex-intimate partner, and that is when you have to understand where the balance moves from harassment or coercive control into stalking. It becomes an obsession and fixation.

From a victim's perspective, we know that, in domestic abuse, the victim will minimise what happens to them. Because victims have often been coercively controlled, they will explain away stuff. Therefore it is very important for organisations, whether third sector or statutory, to understand the context of stalking. Your legislation is not that different from ours, in that sense. It is the imposition of a relationship when the victim does not want any contact and does not want any intrusion. That relationship, in essence, for them does not exist. I am not going to go into the psychologies of stalking because that is where my colleagues will come in, but the obsession and fixation is led by the stalker. Does that makes sense? Am I answering your question?

Ms S Bradley: Yes, it does, Shonagh. It is a very refined answer. It is a specific piece that we need to consider because it is about understanding that. We have just been through the domestic abuse piece, and it is about understanding that although the actions could be very similar, or the same, it is the relationship to the victim that might define whether it is domestic abuse or stalking.

Ms S Dillon: Yes.

Ms S Bradley: Yes, so that is a point worth making. I appreciate your making it because it is certainly worthy of consideration.

Mr Frew: Thanks very much for your presentation. With regard to the service that you provide, you are a multi-agency grouping, but I take it that you work with offenders, too. Is that correct?

Ms S Dillon: Yes. I will refer that question to my colleagues.

Ms Victoria Tunbridge (Multi-Agency Stalking Project): We are a multi-agency team. Kirsty and I work for Southern Health, and Shonagh and her colleagues are from Aurora New Dawn. We also work with Hampshire Constabulary and the National Probation Service in Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. Aurora New Dawn works with the victims, and the rest of us work with the perpetrators.

Mr Frew: Is that deemed controversial over there? Were there barriers that you had to break down to get going with your work, or does it seem to be now best practice what you guys do?

Ms Tunbridge: Fifty per cent of people who commit stalking offences go on to commit further offences against the same or another victim, so if you want to protect victims, you need to work with the perpetrators.

Mr Frew: I agree with you, but did you find it hard to break down popular myths?

Ms Tunbridge: It is about putting everything in context and explaining why we do what we do. We work with perpetrators to stop victims experiencing further offences against them and further distress. If you do not work with perpetrators, that will not happen.

Mr Frew: You might have heard the last session with Victim Support when I asked about our public protection arrangements (PPANI). Is a register a good idea? How would that work in PPANI whereby you are monitoring or managing perpetrators?

Ms Tunbridge: I am not clear on your PPANI arrangements in Northern Ireland. There are pros and cons to a register. Because of the high reoffending rate, there are definite advantages to it. However, one of the difficulties with a register is that if someone has effective treatment and moves on and stops reoffending, how do we make sure that they can leave that behind? It is about how people access the information on the register to enable them to move on and end that part of that life.

For safety reasons, there are definite advantages for information being shared among agencies and being available to people.

Mr Frew: OK. A wee bit more about your organisation itself. You are funded through government, I take it.

Ms Tunbridge: We have ongoing funding issues. This year, we are funded 50% by Health and 50% by the Ministry of Justice through the Offender Personality Disorder pathway. Yet again, however, we have got funding for just one year.

Mr Frew: Right, OK.

Ms S Dillon: And we are funded by the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner.

Mr Frew: I am sure it is very challenging when you are getting funding from all sorts and different pots. I sympathise with you because we have the same problems here where there is joint responsibility for funding.

I do not know whether you have had a chance to study our Bill. Clause 1 is "Offence of stalking" and clause 2 is "Offence of threatening or abusive behaviour", which is more like a one-off offence.

If you have had time to study it, did you find anything in those two clauses to alarm you or that you think we have missed?

Ms Tunbridge: I am really glad you asked that, because I wondered whether I had completely misunderstood the threatening and abusive behaviour. If it is a one-off incident, that, for me, is not stalking, because stalking is a pattern; it is repeated. If it is not repeated and is not a pattern, it is not stalking.

Mr Frew: Yes, I get that. That is why they have labelled this offence "threatening or abusive behaviour". One thing that intrigues me is that clause 2, which is about the offence of threatening or abusive behaviour, has the terminology:

"Reckless" is used in clause 2 but not in clause 1, which is about the main offence of stalking. I know that I am going into detail and you may not have the Bill in front of you, but does it seem strange to you to mention recklessness in relation to the one-off offence but not in relation to the stalking offence itself?

Ms S Dillon: From my perspective and from a victim's perspective, it is about what "recklessness" means, how it is defined and how it is implemented by the criminal justice agencies. A lot of the time, the onus is on victims to prove or to catalogue the offences against them. The more complicated it is for victims, the harder it is to get any kind of retribution. On the legalities, we have colleagues at MASP who are from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), and we can ask them to give you a response to that because they are the experts. I do not know whether Kirsty or Victoria have views on that.

Mr Frew: No. OK. Thank you very much for your time.

Ms L Dillon: Thank you very much for the presentation and for your views on this. You have outlined the challenges in working on and considering the motivation and mental health of stalkers and the development of programmes on that. What are those challenges, and what types of treatment programmes could be considered?

Ms Tunbridge: Kirsty might be having trouble with her sound. Can anybody else hear her?

Ms L Dillon: No, I cannot, sorry.

Ms Tunbridge: I will answer. As you will know, at the moment, nobody knows what treatment works with stalkers, so one of the reasons for the pilot was to try different things and see what works, and we are carrying on with that. The therapies that we are using are cognitive analytic therapy, schema therapy, and some dialectical behaviour therapy. It depends very much on the needs of the individual whom we are working with and the function of their behaviours. Stalking perpetrators are all so different. An ex-intimate is very different from a resentful stalker who is complaining to the organisation, which, again, is very different from someone who is looking for a relationship but has never actually met the person whom they are stalking. We are trying to fit it to the needs of the individuals to be most effective.

One of the difficulties is — our colleagues in the Prison Service find this — that, at the moment, there are no programmes in prisons for stalkers.

There are lots of people in prison with stalking convictions, and no work is being done with them. One of the difficulties with stalking legislation and having such high reconviction rates is this: what can you do to reduce those? We are still in the really early days.

Ms L Dillon: Given that Shonagh said that 90% of stalking behaviour is an ex-partner —.

Ms Tunbridge: Can I just stop you there? Only 67% of our referrals are ex-intimates, so we have quite —.

Ms L Dillon: Yes. To be fair, the question remains the same either way. Is there crossover of programmes? You said that there are not programmes for stalking in prisons at the moment. If people are convicted of stalking but you know that they have a previous domestic violence or sexual violence conviction, are the programmes that are in place for those offences used, or are people unable to avail themselves of them because they have been specifically convicted of stalking ?

Ms Tunbridge: The 67% who are ex-intimates might be referred for building better relationships (BBR), which is a domestic abuse programme. What is beginning to come out in research evidence, however, is that, although the programme works very well on domestic abuse behaviours, it leaves stalking behaviours untouched. For predatory stalkers, the research indicates that the sex offender treatment programmes work by looking at sexual offending behaviour and relapse prevention stuff, but they do not work to address that entitlement around the relationship and the perceptions of and justifications for the behaviour. We are targeting bits of the problem but not getting to the underlying problem.

Ms L Dillon: That is OK. I appreciate that. What I really wanted to find out is whether there is potential for some of the programmes to have some benefits for stalking behaviours. You are right, however: if they do not deal with stalking, they are not appropriate, as they are not connected.

Ms Tunbridge: The programmes almost need an additional module or something.

Ms L Dillon: OK. No problem. Thank you very much.

Miss Woods: Thank you, Victoria, Kirsty and Shonagh. A lot has been answered already. In your submission, you state:

Have you seen any improvements over the past number of years? The serious stalking offence has been in place since 2012. Are you guys seeing improvements there?

Ms S Dillon: Yes, of course. There are benefits from working in true multi-agency partnership, where everyone at the table is on an equal footing. In Hampshire, we have been doing some level of stalking work since 2013, and we have not always got it right. If there are things that you can learn from the stuff that we have not always got right, please ask us. There has been a definite improvement, however. When I have observed the clinic and talked to our stalking advocates, I have found a definite improvement in understanding from the CPS and the police. We are the voice of the victim at the table. When there is prescribed legal terminology or an investigation, we can put the voice of the victim at the centre.

We now have a system in which we all know one another. It can therefore be as simple as an email. Lots of work is done outside the clinic work. We have relationships, so we can ask, "Can I check something with you?". We can also have the challenging conversations about some of the advice that comes from legal experts or the police. That is what victim advocates do anyway. We can say, "That is not working for the victim, because she has done x, y and z".

I do not know whether that answers your question, but I have definitely seen a holistic improvement in multi-agency relationships. We had never sat at the table with health agencies until the MASP stuff really came to fruition. It has been of massive benefit to us, because we have been able to learn about the mental health of stalkers, which really informs our response and safety plans for victims.

Miss Woods: Thank you very much. That certainly answers my question, and it brings me nicely on to my next point. This might not be a question but something that the Committee can look at or discuss amongst ourselves. In your submission, you talk about becoming aware of the motivation and mental health of stalkers through the clinic. You are looking at a number of different therapeutic approaches and programmes. Paul Frew has already touched on how "reckless" in our legislation will be defined. I do not expect you to have this in front of you, but how does the English offence work? Do you have a reasonableness defence? Clause 1(5)(c) mentions the defence of the conduct being:

but "reasonable" is not defined in the Bill. What I am trying to get at is this: how are mental health issues dealt with? Is mental health dealt with separately, or are people convicted under provision? For stalking behaviours, do you see a lot of people who have mental health issues coming through? Is there a defence of reasonableness in your stalking legislation? If so, do you see it being used? Those are wide-ranging, nitty-gritty issues, but I have seen them raised in submissions on the Bill. I have had constituents contact me about how mental health will be treated in the legislation and whether it will be a defence against conviction.

Ms Tunbridge: We still cannot hear Kirsty. Sorry, Kirsty.

I can partly answer that. We will have to get some of our CPS colleagues to get back to you. Forty-five per cent of our referrals have had mental health difficulties. Our work is funded partly through Health and partly through Justice. In my experience, although this might not be what happens generally, people get convicted but then get a mental health disposal. We have been working with people on section 37 and section 41 orders who are in secure hospitals. They are dealt with that way.

There is always the diminished responsibility defence. We have not come across people using that defence, but I guess that they would still end up with a mental health disposal. We can seek clarification on that for you. Mental health difficulties are a big problem among perpetrators.

Miss Woods: Thank you very much.

Mr Beattie: Thanks, Shonagh, Kirsty and Victoria. I have to say that, although it is an awful subject, it is absolutely fascinating. I am fascinated by the talk about perpetrators, prevention, mental health, reoffending and the offender personality disorder pathway. When you look at offender personality disorder, do you find any identifiable patterns? I know that we talk about ex-intimates and predatory stalking, but are there any other identifiable patterns? Secondly, can you outline some of the therapies for offenders that you talked about? You do not need to go through them all, but perhaps you can give us an idea of what those are.

Finally, do you get many people self-referring back to you? Do any people, having gone through your processes and therapies and come out the other end of the criminal justice system, find themselves in a similar position and come back to you saying, "I might need some help here"?

Ms Tunbridge: If I forget some of your questions halfway through, remind me. Kirsty has left, in the hope of rejoining us with sound.

We are really at the beginning of our journey with identifiable personality disorder patterns. We did not start until September 2018. We are collecting that information now. There seem to be some patterns, which we are looking into.

For example, with someone who is a predatory stalker, you are likely to find antisocial personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. With the intimacy seeker, you are looking more at schizoid or schizotypal personality disorders. It is quite early days, but what we are finding is that it is less clear-cut with rejected stalkers than with some of the others, because ex-intimate stalkers are often linked with domestic abuse and moving on. If you ask us again in five years' time, we will be able to give you some really clear stuff, but we are still very much at the beginning of our journey.

The other thing to be aware of is that we are not doing proper personality disorder assessments on people. Some people are coming diagnosed, while, with other people, we are looking at them and going, "They definitely have traits of x, y and z, but do they meet the full diagnostic criteria?". In thinking about future-proofing our service, we are thinking about what we need to do and what we can show. One of the things that would be really good is if we were able to test people whom we think have a personality disorder, but there are legal rights and other things in there to consider. There definitely will be, but we will know when someone has enough information to pull that together.

Mr Beattie: I am sorry that I threw all my questions at you at once, Victoria. My other question is about therapies. You mentioned some therapies, and they sounded fascinating, but I have no idea about what they are. Can you give us an example of the therapies and a time frame for them?

Ms Tunbridge: We are doing therapy with a small number of people, because we are such a small team. To give you some idea, Kirsty and I are the equivalent of one full-time post, I am currently doing cognitive analytic therapy with someone, and I will be seeing that person for 24 sessions. That is over 24 weeks, and I will then see the person for a one-month, three-month and six-month follow-up.

Mr Beattie: What does that consist of?

Ms Tunbridge: First, the idea is a kind of reformulation by helping people to make sense of what they are doing and why they are doing it. When you dig down, you find that there are repeating patterns that have often happened in other relationships to some extent. It is about an entitlement to a relationship and a fear of being lost and of rejection. The therapy is about making those links in how they interact with other people as well as with the victim of the stalking. It looks at the pros and cons of why they might want to change what they are doing and the damage that it is doing to them as well as to others. It then helps them to recognise what they are doing in the moment, either to the victim or to other people. Even if they are not reoffending any more, they will still be thinking about it and planning ways in which to do it. They might be surreptitiously looking at people's Facebook or Twitter accounts. They might be looking at the victim's friends' accounts to find out where they have been going. It is about making them aware of what they are doing. It then looks at changing what they are doing by having exits out of it and a really clear relapse prevention plan in order to make sure that they know that if they start doing x, the next thing that is going to happen is y, and then z. It is about their knowing what they are doing and how they can do things differently.

I am doing cognitive analytic therapy (CAT), because I like CAT. Kirsty is doing schema therapy, because that is her therapy of choice. I am also doing dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), because I am working with a number of people with borderline personality disorder who are self-harming and suicidal, so it is about stabilising them as well as doing the work.

Mr Beattie: When you do all of that, Victoria, do people go away and suddenly realise, "Look, I have got a problem". That sounds silly, but, even when they have gone through the 24 weeks with you and are out the other end, do they know that they still have a problem? Can they identify that problem in themselves and go and seek help? In Northern Ireland, do we need to make sure that there is somewhere to where people can go to seek help when they realise that they have a problem?

Ms Tunbridge: Yes. You definitely do. One of the issues that we have is that it depends very much on motivation. I have done therapy with one person who at the end of therapy still felt that he was not stalking, that he was not fixated and that if only the victim would meet him, she would fall in love with him. I have worked with someone else who at the end of it is really clear. He has some great relapse prevention skills now, and he knows what his triggers are. He talks to people, and he has built a new network around himself to stop him doing it. As with any therapy, it very much comes back to the individual's motivation to change and to do something differently.

You asked whether people can self-refer back to us. At the moment, no. Another difficulty that we have is that we have had some referrals where people are not held by another agency, and, because we are such a small team because of how we are set up, we cannot pick them up. That is a real negative at the moment. We are trying to find a solution. There really needs to be that, because there are people who are not in the criminal justice system yet who would like some help, but they cannot access it. I am not sure how you do that.

Mr Beattie: Yes, it is a conundrum. Thank you very much indeed. Fascinating. Really interesting. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Givan): I thank all the witnesses for taking the time to be with us. On behalf of the Committee, you have my appreciation. If there is anything on which we need to follow up with you, we will do so in due course.