by Gwen Adshead
Relative to the US, the UK took its time, and would only make stalking a specific criminal offence in 2012; prior to that, offenders (including Lydia) were charged with ‘criminal harassment’, under legislation dating back to the mid-1990s. Our justice system has traditionally limited its involvement in the complexities of private personal relationships. The law prefers binary arguments, and criminal statutes tend to be drafted so that actions are right or wrong, which can work well enough with something like homicide. But no matter where they occur in the world, crimes relating to stalking tend to raise trickier questions of perception and degree, depending on local gender roles and cultural attitudes and norms, which may vary widely. The advocates for legal change in regard to stalking in Britain, such as the Suzy Lamplugh Trust,3 were ultimately successful when they framed stalking behaviour as more than ‘harassment’, arguing that not to do so was dangerous and simplistic because it did not address the chronic fixation at the heart of the action or the heavy psychological toll on the victim over time.
Most European countries and some others further afield have adopted similarly specific legislation over recent years, but much like other violent crimes, it is difficult to measure the incidence of stalking on a global level. This behaviour may well exist everywhere, but it might not be reported, particularly if some cultures still don’t see it as problematic, due to different attitudes to gender and civil rights. Stalking seems to be less common in cultures where relationships between women and men are subject to greater social scrutiny, or where men are reluctant to report harassment by women.
Lydia’s victim, Dr W, was a therapist in private practice whom she had seen for grief counselling after her father’s death. Lydia had contacted him at her GP’s suggestion, after complaining that she couldn’t sleep. They had several sessions, which seemed to help her, and her therapy ended after an agreed period. Some six months later, Dr W was alarmed to get a Valentine’s card from Lydia expressing her love for him and written in familiar terms. She ‘couldn’t wait to see him’, she wrote, as if they had been having a relationship. He responded carefully, saying that their work had come to an end and he was unable to meet her again, but she could seek therapy from other sources. When she wrote back asking for ‘just one last session’, he responded courteously that he did not feel a meeting would be helpful. I expect he hoped that would be the end of it.
To Lydia, this refusal was unacceptable, and she began a campaign designed to make him agree to see her, bombarding him with hundreds of emails and texts. When he did not reply, she reported him to his regulatory body, claiming that he had initiated a sexual relationship with her when she was his patient. This caused Dr W professional embarrassment and anxiety; he was the subject of a disciplinary enquiry and had to cease working while it was ongoing. Things escalated when he encountered Lydia outside his home and had to insist she leave. He had never experienced such a thing before, he later told the court, and he began to feel afraid.
A century ago, her behaviour would have been seen as evidence of ‘erotomania’, or de Clérambault’s syndrome, named for the nineteenth-century psychiatrist who first described patients with delusional beliefs about a love relationship with another person. They usually think these feelings are reciprocated, even if they have never met the object of their love; in some cases that person was imaginary. The early psychiatric textbooks indicated that a ‘typical’ case of erotomania involved a mature woman whose amorous fantasies were a nuisance but not considered risky. This account of erotomania as a mental illness in women that gives rise to low-risk behaviour stands in stark contrast to the familiar male obsession with female ex-partners that we are more likely to associate with stalking today, and which sometimes leads to high-risk behaviour or, in rare cases, to fatal violence. The latter are the ones we come to hear about, of course, along with accounts of the occasional celebrity stalker.
Over the last few decades, researchers have shown that there are many different kinds of stalking activities. Some stalkers will stay within the law, using tactics like launching court proceedings over questions of child custody to pressure and intimidate their ex-partner. Others have never met the object of their obsession and tend to pursue them virtually, including approaching their family members or friends, which also exacts a high toll. One victim described how the stalking she had experienced from a stranger was ‘like a virus infecting her life’. The myriad options available to people caught up in a fixation like this and the possible migration of many stalkers into cyberspace makes it difficult to gauge whether or not this crime is on the increase in our society. I wonder if, like testing for a virus, the more it is explored and discussed, the more cases will be uncovered.
Recently, a man who was convicted of stalking commented to me during an assessment, ‘I think when you love somebody, you don’t try to kill them.’ This apparent truism hides the deeper complexity in human relationships, where love and hate can be finely balanced, and ambivalence and ambiguity coexist with intimacy. I think it is erroneous to believe that stalking and harassment are always about love, which may be a hangover from those early ideas about genteel ladies and their harmless fixations on imaginary suitors. Many stalkers do not purport to love their victims; some want revenge, some want to communicate, some want to ensure the victim does not forget who they are. I think that even those who do insist that they love their victim want only to control them. There is an absence of the kind of care and concern that we associate with love; if love means ‘to be known’, as Paul writes to the Corinthians, then stalking demonstrates a most profound lack of knowledge and an utter lack of interest in another person’s feelings and perspective.
According to the textbook definition of risk, Lydia did not pose a high risk of harm to Dr W, but that was not what he felt or experienced. Her persecution of him was invasive and prolonged, lasting well over a year, potentially impacting his livelihood. Despite the fact that she had repeatedly expressed her love for him, this quickly turned to a sense of grievance that he would not do as she asked, leading to her complaints about his professional conduct. Her overriding goal was to be with him in person, even if that meant seeing him in a regulatory hearing; for someone trapped in a delusion, negative contact is better than no contact at all. When that didn’t come to pass, she went to the police with her claim that Dr W had sexually assaulted her while she was his patient, which meant another investigation was launched. This piled further distress on Dr W, who had to hire a lawyer and suspend his work again.
When it became clear that there was no case for her therapist to answer, the police cautioned her. This can be enough of a deterrent, especially when someone is otherwise as pro-social as Lydia still appeared to be. But it only fuelled her sense of grievance. She staked out Dr W’s home, and when he parked his car and went inside, she attacked the vehicle, scraping the paint with a key and breaking the windows. Then she put a card through the letter box addressed to his wife, with graphic descriptions of the rape she had accused Dr W of committing.
He was advised to take out a restraining order at that point, but Lydia ignored it and appeared at his home once again, this time throwing rotten meat over the fence, intending that the family’s dog would eat it and die. Such cruelty to a victim’s pets (reminiscent of the ‘bunny boiler’ in the 1980s film Fatal Attraction) is not unusual, and it is an alarming escalation because it targets a living thing the victim values; they or their human loved ones may be next. Lydia’s behaviour was now seen as high risk, and when she continued to be found near Dr W’s property, she was eventually arrested. During her police interview, she told them that it was all a misunderstanding. She just wanted to meet Dr W face to face so he could apologise to her for all the harm he had done to her; she was the victim, not him. She was convicted and sent to prison.
When I read through the history of her case, I couldn’t help feeling, for the nth time, that I was lucky to have spent most of my working life as a therapist inside high-secure institutions, where i
t would be impossible for my patients to act out as Lydia had. As a forensic psychiatrist working with high-risk offenders, I do have an extra level of wariness about potential stalking by patients, but in fact, my only experience of anything like it arose in a community setting, and did not involve a patient. Someone whom I’d never met took exception to an article I wrote for an academic journal and complained about it and me to my employers, and eventually to the medical regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC). I tend to think complaints about one’s work can be as illuminating as they may be chastening, but in this case, when the person’s letters persisted across several months, their campaign began to feel more like harassment than critique – especially when one of the letters arrived at my home address. I later learned that the author made a habit of complaining about psychiatrists, and it was somewhat reassuring to be one of many, even though at the time it did feel personal. When the letters eventually stopped, I presumed the focus on me and my work had been swept away by newer objects tumbling through the person’s mental stream.
Assessing Lydia’s risk in our forthcoming sessions was going to mean paying close attention to her description of what had occurred and the meaning of it for her. I was particularly curious to learn why she couldn’t let Dr W say no to her, or couldn’t hear it. Our first encounter had been reassuring, and I knew that her probation officer, Jane, felt she’d come a long way. Lydia had done well in prison, I was told, and quickly got ‘enhanced’ status through good behaviour, meaning she was trusted with a variety of jobs, including working with older people and helping others to read. She had also attended a mandated course in prison aimed at increasing empathy for victims, and had expressed remorse and regret for her offence. That all seemed positive, but one of the reasons mental health care teams work with the probation service is that there is a known increase in the risk of reoffending immediately after release. Transition back into the community brings many stressors, and support is important in promoting desistance.
Our first proper session together came a few weeks after her release. I suggested that she come to see me at the local secure unit where I was doing some work; there are some rooms outside the locked environment that are made available for professional visits. I booked a small but bright space, with two chairs facing each other in front of French doors that led to a garden area, where spring was just beginning to make a tentative appearance. I reflexively pulled one chair back a bit and settled down to meet the ‘free’ Lydia, mind open to whatever changes I might notice. At first, there seemed little difference. She was as pleasant as in our initial encounter, and much the same in appearance too, wearing black again, this time with a plain white blouse. She related with me as an equal, chatting about her plans to move from the hostel for prisoners on licence back into her own flat soon, and the small frustrations involved in restoring things like broadband and registering for council tax. She dug into her handbag and showed me a flier she’d made to advertise herself as a dog-walker, with a charming cartoon in black ink of a slight figure who was smiling as she strained to hold on to the leashes of half a dozen large dogs as they pulled her along a path. Even as I complimented her on the drawing, I struggled to reconcile it with what I had learned about her offence, including her attempt to harm Dr W’s family pet.
I wanted to know more about her past, to get her account of herself in her own words, in order to make an accurate assessment of her risk going forward. But for this first session I let her lead me, and she meandered along, describing some renovations she wanted to do in her kitchen and commenting about the weather. ‘I actually saw daffodils on my walk this morning.’ We both smiled at this British code for the fragile relief we feel when winter might just be on the wane. ‘Are you a gardener?’ I asked. ‘Oh no,’ she said quickly, ‘that was my father’s domain, not mine.’ I knew our remaining time was short, but I wanted to pursue that. ‘Do you take after him at all?’ Maybe this was too much, too soon, and she prickled a little. ‘I wouldn’t say so, no.’ At the end of the session, I felt we’d connected pleasantly enough, but I didn’t know her any better than I had at the start.
We made an arrangement to meet again, and I held the door for her. She started to walk away, then paused and turned. ‘Oh, I meant to say, I googled you.’ I nodded, unsurprised. Most people meeting a professional will google them first, and it doesn’t mean anything sinister. I’m thoughtful about cyber-security, as most people are, and I try and keep my cyber-footprint minimal and banal. Given Lydia’s history, I’d maintain a level of wariness, but I didn’t feel in any danger from her because there was no attachment to me. She saw me as a task to be got through, or so I thought. ‘Bye for now,’ she called, as she walked off down the corridor, her back straight and head held high. The word ‘control’ came to mind. She had led the conversation entirely – the dog-walker with a tight leash.
I thought how important it was that I hear from her about her childhood, especially since her attachment to Dr W had arisen after the loss of her father. I’ve described my deep study of the importance of childhood attachments for later adult relationships, and it was, therefore, unsurprising to discover that several prominent researchers into stalking understood the behaviour as a manifestation of a toxic early attachment. One of these, J. Reid Meloy, an American forensic psychiatrist who has worked closely with the FBI, published some work on attachments in stalkers back in the 1990s,4 and there have been several studies since then which have shown that nearly all stalkers have a history of insecure childhood attachment to their parents, more so than might be expected in the general population or even among other types of violent offenders.
I imagined that when Lydia went to Dr W with unresolved distress about the loss of her father, it may have triggered memories of other unresolved losses. I suspected that she wanted Dr W to act as an emotional regulator and control her distress for her. It was similar to the scenario where someone makes a disorganised and preoccupied attachment in a romantic partnership; it is unreasonable to expect that a partner (someone who is not your parent) can make you feel safe, secure and happy at all times. When they fail to do so, as they inevitably will, the disorganised individual feels hurt and frightened, which can lead to controlling behaviours and even hostility. That’s when the partner often decides to leave, which is then interpreted as abandonment and rejection, generating anger, hostility and sometimes violence. The data show us that when people try and leave their controlling partners, they tend to be at most risk at the point of their departure, and if I was right about what had happened, I thought that this might explain why Lydia had started to stalk Dr W after he insisted that their work together had ended.
This kind of attachment has also been found in some battering men and their victims,5 although the perpetrators’ behaviour is also influenced by cultural narratives about women and children as possessions of the male in the family. Such attitudes are central to the concept of ‘toxic masculinity’ and include the belief that, as a man, ‘nobody gets to say no to me’. A harrowing recent example is that of Australian professional rugby player Rowan Baxter, who threatened and then stalked his estranged wife and their children. When he found them, he poured petrol on their car with them inside and set it alight. He then fought off people who rushed to try and put out the flames and, while his family suffered their awful fate, took out a knife and stabbed himself to death. It seems incredible, but I am sure his actions had a perfect symmetry in his mind: his wife and children were ‘his’, and if he could not live without them, then they should not live without him. There are toxic femininities as well as toxic masculinities, but in the context of violence, this concept of entitled possession is particularly risky.
Psychological explanations of the chaotic results of insecure attachment are not intended to provide any excuse for violence in either gender, but they are essential if we are to understand the meaning for a perpetrator and develop strategies for risk management and intervention. As I’ve indicated, I have increasin
gly found that the meaning of offending behaviour comes more easily into focus when I see it through the lens of early childhood attachments, and this is especially true in cases that involve offences of lust and love; there’s been quite a bit of study of this connection in recent years as it relates to female stalkers.6
Lydia had clearly invented a narrative of being abused by Dr W to justify her feelings of grievance and hurt: ‘If I feel this bad, he must have abused me, and he should be punished.’ In preparation for my next session with her, I read the psychiatric reports from the trial, which had drawn on Dr W’s notes. It transpired that after her father’s death, Lydia had been disturbed by memories from her teenage years, and she had revealed to Dr W that her father had sexually abused her. She had never told anyone about this before, and it was only the recurring nightmares that made her disclose her secret to Dr W. It was possible that the painful retelling of this abusive relationship with a much-loved father had triggered some deep emotional confusion in Lydia’s mind between her father and her therapist.
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When she came to our next session, I would talk with her about her memories of her family relationships. I like to use some standard questions about childhood, but when I began to do this with Lydia, she frowned. ‘Why is that relevant?’ I explained, as I often have to with patients, that early experiences in life have an influence on adult relationships and behaviour, and it was important to gain an understanding of the past to help people in the present. Lydia nodded assent, but she seemed a little preoccupied. I had noticed when she arrived that she was carrying a large leather briefcase this time, instead of her usual neat handbag. She had tucked it beside her chair without comment, and I resolved not to enquire about it but to get on with the job at hand.
I began with a few general questions about Lydia’s childhood situation: where she was born, what her family was like, where they lived. Her answers were brief, almost terse. She was the only child of older parents, looked after by a stay-at-home mother and a father who was a solicitor. She had grown up in an English provincial town, done well at school and followed her father into his profession, specialising in property and contract law. I asked her for five words to describe her relationship with her father, with a memory provided for each word. So, for example, I might talk of my relationship with my father as ‘loving’, and recount memories of him coming to meet me after piano lessons so I wouldn’t have to walk home in the dark, and how I would see him arrive and run towards his open arms.
