My Lords, I echo the thanks of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to the many organisations and people who have briefed us and who constantly fight for safety and justice for victims of serious domestic abuse and stalking. I have added my name to Amendment 164.
Ten years ago, I was a member of the Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Stalking Law Reform, supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. It has been a pleasure to work with her over the succeeding years. I was asked to join the inquiry because I had been the victim of harassment and stalking by a political opponent, who over nearly three years waged a war of anonymous hate, criminal damage and increasingly serious threats of violence against myself and my team in Watford.
We could not get the police to take seriously what was happening to us. Only when I gave them my spreadsheet linking more than 100 escalating incidents did the police realise that this was not a political spat. But it took their expert profiler to warn them of how serious this behaviour was and how violent it was likely to become before they arrested the perpetrator. He pleaded guilty to 67 separate incidents and, in common with many other obsessed perpetrators, was found to have had mental health problems.
We know that this category of serious domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators exhibit FOUR traits—an acronym for fixated, obsessive, unwanted and repeated. Their entire behaviour and its escalation must be understood rather than each single incident being looked at separately.
The College of Policing guidance and flow charts published since the stalking protection orders came into effect last year are excellent. This is exactly the type of documentation that needs to be understood by all front-line staff and officers in the police, courts, probation and health. A decade on, there are some pockets of excellent practice, but it is not consistent. The result of that lack of consistency is that victims of such perpetrators—usually but not always women—are ignored. Too many times, this has resulted in serious violence and murder.
I shall give just one example. In 2014, Cherylee Shennan was stabbed to death by convicted killer Paul O’Hara in front of police officers called to investigate reports of domestic abuse. He had already served a life sentence for murdering Janine Waterworth in 1998. Coroner James Newman published a prevention of death report, raising alarms over lack of inter-agency communication between probation services and police. He said that, following O’Hara’s release,
“there were no local MAPPA meetings, no inter-agency meetings and no significant inter-agency communications regarding the perpetrator; no detailing of his licensing conditions and no information regarding either his nature or the trigger factors of his offending”.
Cherylee was failed at every step of the way when she tried to get help. She was even held hostage at knife point at least twice. Had that information been shared, O’Hara would have met the category 4 criteria and could have been risk-managed by MAPPA-plus.
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There is still no mandatory process for the sharing of information between agencies where the offender, despite a known extensive history of domestic abuse
and identified trigger factors, is then managed at MAPPA, hence the need for this amendment. Women are still being attacked and murdered by these fixated perpetrators. Laura Richards, the founder of the Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service, has written a report, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, with a shocking list of 30 perpetrators who have murdered 31 women, seriously harmed at least 58 more whom we know about, and seriously harmed 12 children and killed eight children—again, whom we know about. That is far too many since the stalking law reforms of 2012.
These murders do not happen in a vacuum. These are murders in slow motion—the drip, drip, drip happens over time on an escalating continuum. The incident-led approach to patterned crimes such as domestic abuse and stalking is very costly and must be stopped, as women are paying with their lives and perpetrators continue to offend with impunity.
Many predatory stalkers, sex offenders and serial killers also abuse their partners. Police research found that one in 12 domestic rapists was raping outside the home. Once a violent and controlling man leaves a partner, it does not mean that the violence ends. Evidence suggests that they find new partners to abuse. Many had extensive histories of abusing multiple women.
MAPPA panels already exist as a statutory requirement to manage perpetrators across England and Wales, and the violent and sex offender register—the ViSOR database—supports the process and allows for standardised and meaningful data collection, case management and governance, and should be the answer that we seek. However, the information on the police national database is very mixed, with some forces uploading key information while others, more commonly, simply input the offence with no other contextual data. Context and nuanced detail are crucial when risk assessing and managing these offenders. This is particularly problematic regarding Clare’s law disclosure, as it often means that information is missing, as it is commonplace for domestic abuse and stalking cases to be downgraded to common assault instead of strangulation or attempted strangulation, to criminal damage and harassment instead of stalking, and burglary or interfering with a motor vehicle instead of attempted murder. These cases are downgraded to achieve a conviction, so the insidious and terrifying pattern of behaviour is not recorded, routinely missed and, worse, can mean that MAPPA is not involved.
The NHS regards certain incidents as “never” events. I argue that any violence or murder from a known perpetrator with a history should be regarded by all parties in the criminal justice system as a “never” event. Never again should women repeatedly report that they fear for their lives, and then be murdered after the police have failed to act on a report. Never again should different agencies be aware of escalating serious behaviours, but not catalogue and share them, resulting in attacks and murders. This amendment seeks to put systems in place to make these very serious attacks and murders “never” events, by ensuring that all parties in MAPPA understand and implement the effective guidance that will save lives.