Jemma’s Story

Jemma’s Story

“He was my first internet date and I had arranged to meet him in a public place – just as you’re supposed to do. It turned out he was a former theatre director, poet and landscape gardener. He was now divorced and living in north London.”

Some of his interests – including poetry – were exactly the same as Jemma had declared on her profile on the dating website. They got on well and she says “when he suggested a second date I was enthusiastic.”   But wary of the potential dangers of dating sites, she tried to do some research on him.

“All I discovered was that he had a job teaching adults; so the next time we met I asked him outright whether he’d ever been convicted of a criminal offence.  He said – ‘only for jay-walking.’”

Warning Signs

She decided to trust him and the couple became intimate. But after they’d been together for a few weeks, “little warning flags started to pop up.”  She felt some of his views, including his obsession with anti-CIA conspiracy theories about 9/11, were “ridiculous”.  She decided that although she’d enjoyed getting to know him – as a couple – they were incompatible and she finished the relationship.

“I thought that was the end of it. First, there were e-mails regretting the end of our brief relationship. They pleaded for another chance, insisting we’d both regret it if we didn’t try again. Foolishly, I responded, not wanting to be unkind. Nothing I wrote gave him grounds for hope but the e-mails continued, gradually becoming stranger, darker, more sexual.  It frightened and disgusted me.”

Phone Calls

But things were about to get worse. “Then the phone calls started, several a day. I told him again and again that it was over. But he didn’t stop. There were frequent calls in the middle of the night from a withheld number. When I picked up, there was silence on the other end of the line. After four silent calls at two in the morning, I rang him at 8am and asked him what he thought he could achieve through this harassment. “Closure,” he said, “I want closure. I need to meet.” I said that wasn’t possible. “Well, in that case,” he said, “I want you to buy me a gift subscription to a dating web-site”. I want to meet someone new. It’s the least you can do.”

Jemma refused and put the phone down.  By this time the situation was affecting her emotionally. “I was finding it impossible to concentrate on work. I had a bar put on the line so that nobody could call from a withheld number. I also called the police, who took my concerns seriously: within 10 minutes I had been contacted by the telephone investigation unit, who took a statement over the phone. But as soon as I’d put it down, he called again and left the following message: “I have to speak to you – you can either call me or I am just going to come over. I am sorry, this is just the way things are.  Get back to me if you want or I will come round in about two to three hours. I’ve said my piece and I will either talk to you or come over.”

She phoned the police again. They immediately warned him that if he came near her he would be arrested. He had agreed to “leave town” and not contact Jemma, the Police told her. But on the same day he e-mailed and phoned her – mainly “to apologise.”

Jemma then heard nothing from him for over a week. She went on holiday with her family and during the break, out of the blue, her stalker called seven times.  “I was furious that he felt he had the right to disrupt my life, I cracked and dialled his number. I asked him to leave me alone. What he said chilled me: “You’re not at home, are you?”

Jemma called the police and the investigating officer wasn’t happy she’d contacted her stalker or had failed to report his earlier calls. She was asked to come in and give a statement. But it didn’t end there. “Back in London, the night before I went to the police station, he phoned me four times. After midnight the phone rang for 20 minutes.”

Arrested

The stalker was arrested the following day. Jemma was told he broke down under questioning and admitted he’d been convicted of a similar offence in America approximately 10 years before and that he’d been served with a restraining order. He appeared in court a day later and was found guilty of harassment, given a conditional discharge and served with a restraining order not to contact her.  In the meantime, Jemma contacted the dating web-site to inform them what had happened. She couldn’t find the details of any safety policy – or who to contact about her concerns.  When she did receive a reply was along the lines of “We don’t generally get involved in offline disputes between members, simply because we have no way of establishing the truth of any allegations made.”  It took the company more than 2 weeks after Jemma alerted them to the problem to remove the stalker’s details from the site.

Internet Security

But after being convinced that safety measures were now in place, Jemma revisited the dating web-site. “I decided to try my luck again. There were several immediate replies – one of them from a man with a blurry photograph who said he’d worked for both The Guardian and The Times. I thought he sounded rather full of himself but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and e-mailed him back. Because of his work as a journalist, he said that was concealing his profile from “all but my favourites because I’d like to exercise a little discretion and not risk anyone who knows me reading my profile”.  I thought fair enough, making a note of his real name – Dominic. Then his profile disappeared. A week or two later he was back under a different name – with the change explained away as a “technical hitch” on the web-site. He said he had been busy covering the American elections. I asked if ‘Dominic’ was his real name. He e-mailed back, saying: “Today my name is Dominic; tomorrow my name is Bob, Carol, Ted and Alice” – at which point I didn’t bother to reply.”

False name

He then started to send Jemma emails containing poems – many of them lengthy. He said he was about to visit his sister in America who was ill. “Then, one Sunday, he phoned. “I’m calling from my sister’s place,” he said. I asked how she was and he said she was better. And he laughed – a slightly unhinged laugh that I thought I recognised. I asked him if he was the man who’d been stalking me. There was a long silence before he replied: “No, my name is Dominic.” He insisted that he was a well established journalist; gave me his surname and told me to Google him. (The name checked out; it was only later that I discovered he had assumed the name of a real and blameless travel writer.) But I had a sick feeling in my stomach. When I tried dialling 1471, Dominic’s number was withheld. Could my stalker be back? The next day I asked the head of security at the company to check Dominic’s billing address. A few hours later I had my answer: “Dominic” was my stalker. I felt violated. I was also horrified that he had invented a new identity to harass me again. He had evaded all the security procedures by giving a false name, false e-mail address and false photo. But he had used his real credit card. He was picked up the next morning, appeared in court and was granted bail.”

Jemma praises the way the police dealt with her case – “they came round within hours to install a panic alarm in my home. But the fact that they considered this necessary frightened me more than anything that had gone before.”

Her stalker pleaded guilty to harassment and breach of a restraining order. He was given a community sentence in January.   But she’s still concerned. “I certainly hope he is no longer a menace to anyone.  The dating web-site has contacted all the other women he’d e-mailed but how many more people are out there, creating false identities and then stalking their victims under the cover of websites?”

Lessons learned

• Check, check and check again. Never trust anyone you meet in cyber-space, because they may not be who they say they are.
• Take things slowly. Meet their friends. Build up a picture of them before you get intimate.
• Don’t let them into your life too soon. They could steal valuable information about you and use it against you later.
• Don’t trust internet dating sites to do any safety work for you. They don’t want you to know how unsafe and risky internet dating is.