Wednesday January 10, 2007

When Karen Allison ended her marriage she knew her husband wouldn’t let her go quietly. “He had been abusive,” she says, “so I expected him punish me for leaving”.

She was right. Last November, Darlington magistrates court heard evidence of a two-year campaign of harassment Thomas Welsh had directed at Allison since their split. Immediately after ending their relationship, she had been bombarded with sexually explicit text messages and photographs on her mobile phone. Worse was to come. She soon discovered that her details had been posted on a website aimed at cross-dressers and sadomasochists, where she had been advertised as being “available for sexual services”. “It was horrific”, she says. “I was getting all these disgusting emails and phone calls.”

The court fined Welsh, imposed an indefinite restraining order banning him from going within 100yards of Allison and also banned him from putting her details on the internet.

In the most recent British Crime Survey, published last summer, 8% of women and 6% of men said they had been stalked within the previous year. And 20% of all women are stalked at some stage of their lives. In the case of men stalking women, the harassment usually starts when a woman ends an abusive relationship or rejects the sexual advances of a man prone to violence and jealousy. According to research carried out at Leicester University, more than 200 women leave the UK each year because a stalker has made their lives unbearable; the average length of time that a woman is stalked is seven and a half years.

Cyber-stalking - the use of technology such as internet and mobile phone – to track victims has increased sharply in the past few years. Many of the offenders are men who are disgruntled and angry at being rejected by their partners. Rather than creeping around outside the victim’s home, or following her to work, though, some of these men, as Allison found, post details of their victim on websites containing sexually explicit material.

Others email pornographic photographs and videos of the victim (often taken without her knowledge or consent) to family members and work colleagues.

Welsh, who runs a transvestite mail-order and cross-dressing service for men, used his personal website to post Allison’s details. Other cyber-stalkers sign their victims up directly to public sites where people advertise for casual sex, often writing their victim’s profile as if she is available for all manner of sexual activity with strangers.

Such men, according to Hamish Brown, a former police officer and expert on stalking and harassment, fit the profile of the “obsessional stalker”- an ex-partner who refuses to believe that a relationship is over. “These men refuse to give up, however clearly the victim tells him she doesn’t want to know. He has this attitude of, ‘If I can’t have her, no one will’,” says Brown.

When Sophie Green started getting emails from her ex-partner, Simon Ward, saying things such as, “Oh, you saw so-and-so and went to that bar at that time, did you?”, she realized he was tracking her movements through information she had written on her personal blog. “There was always an implicit threat that he would track me down so I stopped blogging, which I really resented”. Green began to receive sexually explicit mails from Ward, often containing pornographic photographs. “I found them really disturbing and felt sexually violated, which is presumably what he wanted, because I would not have sex with him any more,” she says.

“Simon knew I had been raped when I was 13, although he insisted on calling it ‘surprise sex’. He discovered my email address and password and then would subscribe me to really violent rape sites”.

Green changed her personal email address, but Ward soon discovered her work one, and began sending her pornography and threats on a regular basis.

When sexually explicit emails are sent to victim’s workplace, they risk humiliation and even losing their jobs. Jane Thompson split from her boyfriend of only three weeks, “because I felt smothered by him”. One morning soon after, when she arrived at work, a colleague asked her if she had emailed her from home over the weekend. It turned out that her ex-boyfriend had sent Thompson’s colleague “a folder with about 10 photos of us both having sex”, she says, “and at that moment I wanted to die”.

Thompson’s ex had used a method common to cyber-stalkers- tracing their victims email address and sending messages from that address containing offensive, pornographic and even libellous material.

According to research by an expert on stalking, Dr Lorraine Sheridan of Leicester University, half of all victims are now harassed via internet. And despite the image of the stalker as a creepy loner, there is a growing online community to help and support the cyber-stalker’s efforts. So-called “revenge” websites, such as Avengers Den and Get Revenge on Your Ex, are becoming more popular, says Sheridan.

I spent an hour surfing such sites and what I found was profoundly disturbing. One site advertised itself as being able to assist those wishing to experience “the pure, unadulterated satisfaction you get from totally crushing your ex’s self-esteem and annihilating their reputation”. Another offered a service called “fake SMS”, where a message can be sent “to your ex” which appears to come from someone else. One satisfied customer wrote that, “I sent the bitch a message saying she is a dirty slut (etc) and made it come from her mum’s boyfriend!!!”

One man had sent his ex a text message saying, “I know I said you were the best sex ever, but I lied – it was the drugs talking and I needed them to f… you”, and programmed it to repeat on the hour, as well as play down her phone answering service on her landline.

These sites are not specifically targeted at men wanting to exact revenge on women (there are women who post on such sites, often describing how they sent advertisements for Viagra, or penile enlargement operations) and there are no figures to give a breakdown on the gender of users. But trawling through them, the majority of those leaving posts seem to be men.

“Whether the stalker harasses his victim by letter, in person or by email is relevant”, says Brown. “But victims of cyber-stalking have often told me they get terrified of the ‘invisible’ stalker who is hiding in cyberspace, because he could be anyone and everywhere”.

One woman who responded to a request I posted on an anti-stalking website told me that her ex-husband posted her name and address on a website used to meet sexual partners, posing as her, and offering “group sex with her”. It was really scary”, she tells me in an email, “because when I read the posting it said I like to act out rape fantasies, so men in twos and threes should break into the house, have sex with me and ignore my screams of terror, as that is all part of the game”.

The good news is that cyber-stalkers are more likely to be caught than others, because there is usually a trail of evidence from computers and mobile phones. However, stalkers are usually determined and often put time and effort into becoming technical experts.

“I had no idea that what he was doing was illegal”, says Green. “The police need to make it clear, and get the message out to women that sending malicious communications – whether by hand, post or computer – is a crime”.

The effects on victims of stalking do not go away when the stalker finally does. “It will take me years to get over what he did and to feel safe again”, says Allison. “I just wish something had been done to stop him before he almost ruined my life”.

· Some names have been changed.

Text 3.4 Migrant crime wave a myth – police study

ACPO report concludes offending no worse than rest of the population

Vikram Dodd, crime correspondent

The Guardian, Wednesday April 16, 2008

A wide-ranging police study has concluded that the surge in immigrants from eastern Europe to Britain has not fuelled a rise in crime, the Guardian has learned.

The findings will be presented to the home secretary, Jacqui Smith, tomorrow when she meets chief constables to discuss the issue. Several of them had complained that they needed more money to deal with increases in migrant populations in their areas. However, the study prepared for the Association of Chief Police Officers challenges claims that up to 1 million people from EU accession countries have caused a rise in criminality.

The report finds that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities are in line with the rate of offending in the general population.

A senior source with close knowledge of the report said: “Any rise has been broadly proportionate to the number of people from those communities coming into this country. People are saying crime is rising because of this influx. Given 1 million people have come in, that doesn’t make sense as crime is significantly down”.

The fall in the annual crime rate in England and Wales is accelerating, with a drop of 9% recorded by police in the year to September 2007, according to Home Office figures published earlier this year.

The report by Grahame Maxwell, chief constable of North Yorkshire, and Peter Fahy, who leads the Cheshire force, says that “resentment and misunderstanding” about why new migrants are coming to Britain has stoked tensions. It calls for businesses benefiting from the new workers to do a better job of explaining the economic benefit of migrant workers.

The report says: “While overall this country has accommodated this huge influx with little rise in community tension, in some areas sheer numbers, resentment and misunderstanding, have created problems”. It adds that the immigration from Eastern Europe has been different to previous arrivals, because it happened much more quickly. The report says that new migrants may be more likely to commit certain types of offences. Polish people are linked to drink-driving, and problems have arisen in central London with some Romanian children being used by adults to commit petty robberies.

There are also problems with people trafficking and exploitation, but while these may be more likely in some migrant communities, other types of offences are less likely to occur.

The reports calls for new agreements with east European countries to share intelligence and information on less serious crimes, such as domestic violence and serial theft.

It also calls for immigration authorities, schools and the health service to share information with police about new nationalities in their areas.

The report is primarily based on intelligence gathered by detectives about crime patterns in different areas of England and Wales. Police recording codes only contains the category “white Europeans” covering people originating from France to the Urals. The report says more analysis is needed.

The source with close knowledge of the report said: “Given the number coming into the country, the problems have been very few in terms of criminality, increases in crime or community tensions”.

“Most are coming here to earn money, most are professionals with qualifications, and they work then go home”.

The report says areas that have faced most demands include Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire because of the demand for agricultural workers, as well as Slough. Cambridgeshire’s chief constable, Julie Spence, has warned of increased demands on her force and Kent’s chief constable, Mike Fuller, also reportedly wrote to ministers saying that the government’s failure to give his force more money was not taking account of extra demands on his officers.

Text 3.5 One in three back carrying knives

Youths claim they need protection against peers

Gaby Hinsliff, political editor

The Observer, Sunday May 18, 2008

One in three young people living in cities thinks it is acceptable to carry a knife in self-defence because violence is so rife, according to research revealed today. Teenagers and twenty-somethings have lost faith in politicians, the police or schools to protect them and increasingly believe they need to be armed to defend themselves against people of their own age. Nearly half said they knew someone who had been a victim of knife crime.

The survey has been released as the Home Office prepares to launch a national advertising campaign aimed at teenagers who carry knives for protection, warning that doing so makes them more likely to be stabbed. Mothers will also be targeted by ads in women’s magazines urging them to talk to their children about the risk of carrying weapons.

However, experts warned that unless children can be made to feel safer on the streets, they are unlikely to give up their weapons. “There is a picture of young people completely taking it for granted that guns and knives and violence is a kind of everyday part of their landscape”, said Don Slater, a sociologist at the London school of Economics.

The survey of 355 people aged 16 to 24 in London, Manchester and Bristol was carried out by Tuned In, a market research company specializing in your issues. It found 30 per cent said it was acceptable sometimes to carry a knife while 23 per cent would use one. One in 10 claimed to have had access to a gun.

A third admitted that fear of gun and knife crime affected where they went out socially while 34 per cent believed that they would witness a knife attack.

Slater said that young people’s perceptions risked creating a ‘self fulfilling prophecy’ as they reacted to the perceived threat by taking up weapons. He said knives were not seen as glamorous accessories, and that politicians who attacked ‘gangsta’ culture or rap music were missing the point: “Nobody that I could see was glamorising what was going on: gangs were not popular”.

The Home Office advertising campaign to be launched later this month will argue that those who carry knives raise the risk of having their on weapon used against them as well as of escalating fights that would once have been settled by fists. It was designed in consultation with teenagers themselves.

The Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, said the ₤1m campaign would ‘challenge the fear, glamour and peer pressure that can drive youngsters to knife crime’, alongside recent moves to double the maximum sentence for carrying a knife to four years.

However, Enver Solomon of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College said there was little research on what worked in deterring knife carrying. He said the unit had been told by senior Met officers that the most pragmatic response would be to train teenagers in first aid in the hope that more stabbing victims could be kept alive until emergency help reached them.

He said stop and search campaigns similar to a police exercise in London lat week were of limited use, since seizing knives did not take them out of circulation when a teenager could easily take another one from the kitchen: “It’s a losing battle trying to confiscate them.”

Two teenagers were in a critical condition yesterday after they were stabbed outside a nightclub in London’s Brick Lane during the early hours.

Text 3.6 Her Crime was to fall in love. She paid with her life

When 17-year old Rand Abdel-Qader met a British in Basra, she dreamt of romance. But five months later she was murdered in a savage attack by her father. But there will be no trial: this was an ‘honour killing’. Investigation by Afif Sarhan in Basra, Mark Townsend and Caroline Davies.

The Observer, Sunday April 27 2008

Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.

It was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English in Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body – from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbors who soon gathered round, to ‘cleanse his honour’.

And as Rand was put into the ground, without ceremony, her uncles spat on her covered corpse because she had brought shame on the family. Her crime was the worst they could possibly imagine – she had fallen in love with a British soldier and dared to talk to him in public.

Rand was murdered last month. That the relationship was innocent was no defence. She had been seen conversing intimately with Paul. It was enough to condemn her, because he was British, a Christian, ‘the invader’, and the enemy. The two met while he was helping to deliver relief aid to displaced families in the city and she was working as a volunteer. They continued to meet through their relief work in the following months.

Rand last saw Paul in January, two months before her death. It was only on 16 March that her father, Abdel-Qader Ali, learned of their friendship. He was told by a friend, who worked closely with police, that Rand had been seen with Paul at one of the places they both worked as volunteers. Enraged, he headed straight home to demand an explanation from his daughter.

‘When he entered the house, his eyes were bloodshot and he was trembling’, said Rand’s mother, Leila Hussein, tears streaming down her face as she recalled her daughter’s murder. ‘I got worried and tried to speak to him but he headed straight for our daughter’s room and he started to yell at her’.

‘He asked if it was true that she was having an affair with a British soldier. She started to cry. She was nervous and desperate. He got told of her hair and started thumping her again and again.

‘I screamed and called out for her two brothers so they could get their father away from her. But when he told them the reason, instead of saving her they helped him end her life’, she said.

She said Ali used his feet to press down hard on his own daughter’s throat until she was suffocated. Then he called for a knife and began to cut at her body. All the time he was calling out that his honour was being cleansed.

‘I just couldn’t stand it. I fainted’, recalled Leila. ‘I woke up in a blur later with dozens of neighbors at home and the local police’.

According to Leila, her husband was initially arrested. ‘But he was released two hours later because it was an “honour killing”. And, unfortunately, that is something to be proud of for any Iraqi man’.

At the police station where the father was held Sergeant Ali Jabbar told The Observer last week: ‘Not much can be done when we have an “honour killing case”. You are in a Muslim society and women should live under religious laws.

‘The father has very good contacts inside the Basra government and it wasn’t hard for him to be released and what he did to be forgotten. Sorry but I cannot say more about the case’.

Rand, considered impure, was given only a simple burial. To show their repugnance at her alleged crime, her family cancelled the traditional mourner ceremony.

Two weeks after the murder, Leila left Ali. She could no longer bear to live under the same roof as her daughter’s killer and asked for a divorce. ‘I was beaten and had my arm broken by him’, she said. ‘No man can accept being left by a woman in Iraq. But I would prefer to be killed than sleep in the same bed with a man who was able to do what he did to his own daughter, who, over the years, had only given him unconditional love’.

Now she works for a women’s organization campaigning against honour killings’. I just want to try to stop other girls having the same fate as my beloved Rand’, said Leila who is forced to move regularly from friend top friend.

‘What they did to her was ugly and pathetic. Rand was just a young girl with romantic dreams. She always kept her religion close to her heart. She would never even hurt a petal on a rose’.

Last year 133 women were killed in Basra – 47 of them for so-called ‘honour killings’, according to the Basra Security Committee. Out of those 47 cases there have been only three convictions for murder.

Since January this year, 36 women have been killed.

Text 3.7 US deal over illegal immigrants

BBC News Thursday, 17 May 2007, 21:09 GMT 22:09 UK

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