One of Alex Belfield's victims says the stalker's case is a "watershed" moment and that we may now have reached the "peak" of online harassment. BBC Radio 2 and Channel 5 presenter Jeremy Vine hopes that Belfield will eventually come out of prison a changed man.
Mr Vine said he has already had apologetic emails from some of Belfield's former followers, but says he is still thinking about whether to come off social media altogether because of what has happened. His interview comes after Belfield was sentenced for the charge of "simple stalking" against Jeremy Vine and theatre blogger Philip Dehany.
He was also found guilty of stalking BBC presenter Bernard Speeding and videographer Ben Hewis. He was cleared of stalking charges in relation to four women, but still had indefinite restraining orders imposed in relation to them and his other four victims.
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Describing the severity of the case, Mr Vine said: "I don't think there will ever be a case in British criminal courts which is as bad as this one. With the amount of crime you can do on the internet in terms of stalking, damage, hurt and harm, he reached the peak of it."
Belfield, 42, of Mapperley, was once a presenter on BBC Radio Leeds but after leaving because of what he described as a dispute over pay, he spent around a decade pursuing various other avenues in the media industry. One of these was his YouTube channel, "The Voice of Reason", which he eventually earned money from.
His channel comprised interviews with comedians including Jim Davidson and Roy "Chubby" Brown, as well as several videos railing against the BBC in general. It was in 2019 that Jeremy Vine first became aware of Belfield, after he was labelled a "c**t" by him online.
Mr Vine then posted a picture of Belfield asking if anyone knew who he was, triggering a series of events that included Belfield posting Mr Vine's home address online and falsely accusing him of stealing £1,000 for a deceased friend's memorial fund. Matters eventually culminated in Belfield being sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to five and a half years in jail earlier this month - half of which he will serve in custody.
Speaking about the experience of seeing Alex Belfield for the first time during the Nottingham Crown Court trial, Mr Vine said: "I wasn't at BBC Leeds, I'd never come across the guy. I think I was apparently part of some training session he was in once, but I don't even remember him.
"He had a barrister who was meant to be asking questions on his behalf. He was defending himself but he'd got a court-appointed barrister because you're not supposed to be face–to-face when you're a stalker.
"The barrister had covid so I said 'let's just go for it' and it was a very strange thing. Looking at that grinning, smirking mugshot and the fact that when one of the victims was talking about how he nearly hanged himself, Belfield was actually smirking and chuckling, I think he's a bit detached from reality - he's just a big old psychopath."
At one point during the trial, Jeremy Vine said that Belfield was the "Jimmy Saville of trolling." Expanding on this comment, Mr Vine said: "His offending is above and beyond anyone else's in his category, like Saville's was in a different category, like Shipman in a different category. When you're looking at web-based harassment and stalking, you won't find any other offender as prolific and as vicious as Belfield."
Belfield is now in prison but many of his videos remain on YouTube. The social media company says that it has removed videos which violated its community standards.
But Jeremy Vine says that the case has made him think about coming off social media altogether. He said: "I'm quite quiet on social media at the moment because I'm just considering all of that.
"My wife said to me that maybe it's time to step back from it because there's just so much loathsome material and it's all by anonymous accounts - rarely do you see people posting insults under their own name. The attraction to social media initially was that it's so informal and there were no rules, but now we're realising that the biggest problem is that it's so informal and there are no rules."
Mr Vine hopes that Belfield will come out of prison a changed man, but that some of his behaviour during the trial raises doubts. He said: "He did at the end of the case say he was sorry for all the hurt he'd caused. Then he went online with a delayed video release saying he was not ashamed of who he is and what he'd done, so it's difficult to rely on his words.
"But the case is a watershed because it's shone a light on non-contact stalking, where your digital self is the thing that's under attack and because a lot of us are old-fashioned and analogue, we have a problem understanding the harm and damage that can be done. You only have to listen to one of the victims who said he was seconds away from hanging himself to realise that it's just as damaging as real-world stalking - that's why Belfield is so dangerous."
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