Good morning. The first known case of Matthew Hardy’s stalking was in 2009; in January this year, he finally went to prison. Hardy, who had pleaded guilty, was sentenced to nine years.
Sirin Kale first reported on the story in March. Last month, the Guardian released a podcast series, reported and presented by Sirin, about Hardy and his multiple victims. His offending often began with messages from fake accounts, and the series is titled for a phrase that he used to start conversations with many of the women whose lives he would ultimately tear apart: “Can I tell you a secret?”
Last week, Hardy’s sentence was reduced by a year on appeal – still among the longest ever handed down for a stalking offence. He is likely to be freed on licence in 2025. A new update episode drops this afternoon, and if you haven’t heard the podcast, a riveting exploration of the case which was No 1 in the UK and Australian charts, you should seek out its exploration of a vastly complex case immediately.
For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Sirin about the bigger picture around stalking: what we do and don’t know about the psychology of perpetrators, the particular features of stalking in the 21st century, and why the vast majority of offenders still go unpunished. That’s after the headlines.
Five big stories
Ukraine | Vladimir Putin has blamed Ukraine directly for the blast at a vital bridge linking Russia and Crimea, describing the attack as an “act of terror”. Amid expectations that the Kremlin plans an escalation of the war, there were reports of Russian attacks on Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro. For the latest, follow the Guardian’s live blog.
Welfare | Liz Truss is on the edge of another major U-turn after Tory MPs warned she would lose a vote on delivering a real-terms cut to benefits. Dozens of backbenchers are believed to be ready to rebel against payments rising in line with earnings rather than inflation.
Iran | Iranian schoolchildren were being arrested inside school premises on Sunday by security forces arriving in vans without licence plates, social media reports emerging from the country suggested. The news came as protests against the regime entered their fourth week.
Scotland | Nicola Sturgeon has said she would prefer a Labour government in London but accused the party of being a “pale imitation” of the Conservatives. Conservative cabinet minister Nadhim Zahawi accused her of employing “dangerous” language when she said she “detested” the Tories in a BBC interview to mark the SNP’s party conference.
Ireland | Tributes poured in on Sunday to the 10 victims of an explosion at a Donegal petrol station. The three children among those who died were named as Shauna Flanagan Garwe, five, 14-year-old James Monaghan, and 14-year-old Leona Harper.
In depth: ‘Officers are still conditioned to think physical harm is the only thing that matters’
Matthew Hardy is far from the first stalker Sirin has reported on, and by the time she started to look at his case, she knew the territory well. But when she first started out on the subject years ago, she had some of the same preconceptions that colour the way many of us think about this unique category of offences. “Somewhat naively, I thought of stalking as culminating in someone outside your home, breaking in and threatening to kill you,” she says. “But it’s so much more complicated than that.”
Hardy’s behaviour appeared to diverge from that stereotypical image of the crime – and some of his victims struggled to get their stories taken seriously. He created fake accounts to start online conversations with his victims, in some cases spread malicious lies about their sexual activities, and led them to believe he was watching them as they went about their lives. Two of his victims were so afraid that they would sleep with weapons next to their beds.
Hardy’s case is marked out by something else: the fact that he went to prison at all. “One of the reasons I’ve always been interested in it is that the conviction rate is so pitiful,” Sirin says. According to the Suzy Lamplugh trust, a leading UK charity devoted to reducing the risk of stalking and harassment, about 0.1% of cases result in a conviction. “That’s just insane. It’s basically a crime that isn’t being prosecuted.”
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Why are prosecution rates so low?
Besides the wider story of austerity and limited police resources, there are aspects of how the justice system handles stalking in particular that help to explain that dismal statistic. Hardy started off pursuing women in his home town, but as his offending became more sophisticated, he found people online. That meant his victims were across the country, in different jurisdictions – and there was no easy way for the police to join the dots.
“We still don’t have a national police recording system for this kind of crime,” Sirin says. “An officer in place X won’t know about something similar in place Y.” Paladin, a national stalking charity, has called for stalkers to be added to the violent and sexual offenders register, and parliament’s home affairs select committee agreed with that recommendation in 2018, so that known stalkers can be proactively monitored – but it still hasn’t been implemented.
Meanwhile, “a lot of forces don’t have people trained in data collection or data analysis”, Sirin says. “So they can’t collect evidence by tracking IP addresses, following different phones, the things you need to identify who is doing this.” That’s changing – but there is still a postcode lottery for victims of stalking on how their cases will be handled.
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How does online offending get treated?
One of the clearest takeaways from Can I Tell You A Secret? is the devastating impact on victims of an offender whom many of them never met. That sits uncomfortably alongside the image many people have of stalking, the same one Sirin once had, as an offence which is carried out in person – and police officers or prosecutors may be just as prone to those cues as the rest of us.
There should be no doubt about the gravity and possible escalation of in-person stalking, Sirin notes: “When you look at the research, pretty much any domestic homicide involves some degree of stalking in the run-up.” She points to the case of Molly McLaren, who twice contacted police about her ex-partner Joshua Stimpson’s stalking behaviour before he stabbed her to death. “And that is a huge problem – so often, when police forces hear about someone being stalked by an ex, they just view it as a domestic matter.”
But at the same time, Hardy’s victims suffered appalling consequences. And yet many of them feel their cases were put in the same basket as “mean tweets” or other ordinary features of online life, instead of being understood as defamation, intimidation, and harassment.
Hardy was never violent, but “talking to these women, it’s so clear that the effects can be severe and lifelong”, Sirin says. “Unfortunately, there are still officers conditioned to think about physical harm as the only thing that matters. Quite often offenders end up being charged with lesser offences, like malicious communications, and they receive a caution, which doesn’t stop them. The law is clear on this: online stalking is stalking, and police officers should not be drawing a distinction.”
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What happens to the victims of stalkers after their release?
According to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, 55% of convicted stalkers go on to reoffend – against a rate of 29% among all offenders. “What’s really difficult and dangerous with stalking is that it’s fundamentally about obsessive behaviour,” Sirin says. “And so if there isn’t support to identify the roots of that pattern and put a stop to it, the chances of it happening again is high.”
One of the reasons Hardy’s victims were relieved by the length of his sentence is that it means they can live without the fear of his harassment for as long as he is in prison – but short of locking perpetrators up for the rest of their lives, that can never be a complete solution.
Hardy has Asperger’s and autism, which his lawyers argued made it impossible for him to understand the impact of his offending on his victims. Courts agreed that these mental disorders were relevant, and his sentence was reduced by 25% to allow for them. But Sirin notes that the vast majority of people with Asperger’s or autism never commit crimes; autism expert Prof Sir Simon Baron-Cohen points out on the podcast that like anybody else, “the last thing [autistic people] want to do is hurt somebody, they act in ways just like the rest of us of wanting to alleviate other people’s distress”.
Hardy’s case is unique – and it is risky to generalise from his pattern of behaviour to draw conclusions about stalkers (or people with autism) in general. “But when reoffending rates are so high, there has to be a place for perpetrator intervention schemes in prison – they can make a real difference,” Sirin says. “But the prison system is disastrously underfunded, and they just do not have the resources they need for that kind of work.”
It would be understandable if some among Matthew’s victims would find that kind of focus uncomfortable. “But at the same time, they know that ultimately he is going to come out. They are afraid that when he comes out he might reoffend, and do it in a more extreme way. What you hear from all of them is pretty simple: above all, they just want it to stop.”
What else we’ve been reading
As well as a superb portrait of Viola Davis as an actor, Ellen E Jones’ interview is a remarkable insight into what it took to make The Woman King, a 19th century epic about an elite female fighting force with a predominantly Black cast. “There’s no precedent that it will work,” Davis says. “The bottom line is money. It’s not about cultural impact – it’s about money.” Archie
Falling out of parties with Kate Moss, grappling with anxiety, all while fulfilling your biggest dreams: Nick Grimshaw talks with Eva Wiseman about his star-studded life and his new book. Nimo
I loved Simon Usborne’s piece for Saturday magazine on the team squirreled away digitising the BBC’s vast archive – and finding new treasures in the process. As well as a history of the corporation’s programmes, says editor Helen Toland, the archive is a “massive pool of data about the human condition”. Archie
Deepa Parent spoke with some of the Iranian school girls protesting in their droves against the repressive regime: “If I don’t join the protests, we will die anyway of hunger and high prices, or the government will kill us just like Mahsa”. Nimo
Liz Truss’s handling of the current polycrisis has led some progressives to believe that a Labour victory in the next election is a formality. But, writes Nesrine Malik, “failing to embark on an economic and cultural reshaping of the country when the ground is fertile” risks leaving room for the Tories to rise again. Archie
Sport
Football | Two goals from Bukayo Saka helped Arsenal to a 3-2 victory over Liverpool to go top of the Premier League. The FA later said it was considering whether to launch an investigation into an incident involving players from both sides in a heated row during the game. Meanwhile on Sunday, Crystal Palace beat Leeds 2-1, West Ham beat Fulham 3-1, and Manchester United beat Everton 2-1.
Formula One | Max Verstappen secured his second world championship with victory at the Japanese Grand Prix. On a chaotic day at Suzuka where the race was truncated to 28 laps because of rain, Verstappen admitted that he was uncertain that the victory would count for enough points to guarantee him the title.
Cricket | England won the first Twenty20 international against Australia in Perth after an opening stand of 132 from Jos Buttler and Alex Hales. A counterattack led by David Warner was ultimately blunted by three wickets from Mark Wood.
The front pages
The Guardian’s Monday paper leads with “Rebels pile on PM over benefits as further 450,000 face poverty”. The main picture shows a Ukrainian apartment building gashed open by a Russian attack after Vladimir Putin’s Kerch bridge to Crimea was partly blown up. “Bridge blast was act of terrorism, says Putin” – that’s the Telegraph this morning. The Metro has a shot of the apartment building and says it’s the “Wrath of Putin” on display. Its splash is “How many more did he kill?”, about the imprisoned Scottish serial killer Peter Tobin who has died.
Back to Truss’s tribulations in the i: “PM scrambles to save her premiership as Tories warn of ‘wipeout’”. The Express says “Rebels urged to stop plots AND show loyalty” while the Times has “Truss turns on the charm”, saying she will host lunches with her critics and abandon real-terms benefit cuts. The Mirror has “Katie Piper’s attacker goes on the run”, saying acid attacker Stefan Sylvestre has breached his parole. “Campus wokery on the march” – the Daily Mail claims universities are “decolonising” their subjects, even thermodynamics. The Sun leads with “Fury over Crown Philip slur” – it’s angry that an “‘affair’ plotline” on the Netflix drama will air only “weeks after Queen death”. The top story in the Financial Times is “‘Unwise’ OPEC+ oil production cuts threaten global economy, says Yellen”.
Today in Focus
The crisis in Britain’s nurseries: Are we failing our youngest children?
The country’s nurseries are under pressure – with staff saying they can get better paid work in supermarkets, and parents saying fees can cost them as much as their rent. How did the early years sector end up on the brink and how is it having an impact on our children?
Cartoon of the day | Edith Pritchett
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
When Mina Holland learned that her baby daughter had Diamond-Blackfan anaemia, a rare blood disorder, and would need a blood transfusion once every three weeks in order to stay well, she knew that hospitals would become a central part of her child’s life. Although most of us are used to their grave and unwelcoming decor, she and her daughter were pleasantly surprised by the vibrancy of the Snow Fox ward at Evelina London children’s hospital. Holland highlights how something as simple as warm colours and light humour can ease the experience of children and their families going through an exceptionally difficult time.
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. Until tomorrow.
