Stalking victims face a “postcode lottery” of support due to a lack of advocates in police forces across the UK, a coroner has said following the death of Gracie Spinks.
The 23-year-old was killed in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, by a work colleague, Michael Sellers, who had become “obsessed” with her after previously harassing a number of other women. On 18 June 2021 he followed Spinks to the field where she kept her horse before fatally stabbing her and taking his own life soon after.
Derbyshire police have admitted a number of serious failings in their handling of Spinks’s case after she reported Sellers to the force four months before her murder. These included officers not requesting information from Sellers’s employer about complaints against him or carrying out a national database check, which led to them categorising him as “low risk”.
Following an inquest into Spinks’s death, the assistant coroner Matthew Kewley has written to the home secretary, James Cleverly, expressing his concerns over the “consistency and availability” of stalking advocates in UK police forces to support victims.
“Whilst I was reassured to hear that Derbyshire now benefits from stalking advocates, I heard evidence that many other areas around the UK do not have [them],” he said. “This essentially creates a postcode lottery for victims who report stalking to the police.”
Spinks’s parents, Richard Spinks and Alison Ward, said the coroner’s report was a “damning indictment” that “details the colossal failures and the many areas of concern that were sadly evident throughout the inquest”.
They said: “Even before Gracie’s tragedy the public trust in the police was hanging by a thread, after numerous scandals and systemic failings. Unfortunately after Gracie’s death, faith in the police has been entirely lost. Our grief will be ever present for life and continue long after the officers who failed Gracie have given evidence and left the court building.”
In the prevention of future deaths report, Kewley listed a number of concerns about Derbyshire police’s handling of Spinks’s stalking complaint, and urged them to improve training for officers, as well as bolstering risk assessments and record keeping. He also said there was an “ongoing issue … around the ability of some police officers to deal effectively with reports of potential dangerous weapons found in the community”.
The force has previously apologised for failing to investigate a bag of weapons found near the field where Spinks was killed six weeks later, which was subsequently linked to Sellers.
Spinks’s parents said: “The home secretary must unequivocally communicate to the chief constable that standards of policing need to improve and receive assurance that not only will recommendations in the report be followed, but there will be oversight on implementation across each area identified. Vulnerable victims of stalking need to feel safe in the knowledge that the police will listen, investigate and protect them.”
