'She’s not going to stop. She will get revenge': Victims of stalking share experiences

Pic: iStock

• Content advisory: The following story discusses lived experiences of stalking, harassment, relationship/intimate abuse and physical violence. For more information and support, please see Stalking in Ireland's support page.

When Cork businesswoman Laura O’Connell was contacted by the producer of Virgin Media One’s recent documentary on stalking, she considered taking part. On hearing her story, it’s pretty obvious why she declined.

Laura’s stalker is in prison, but she worries about her future.

“It’s all ahead of me when she gets out. She’s not going to stop. She will get revenge. It’s who she is,” she says.

Stalked debunked the long-standing myth that stalkers are primarily men pursuing women who romantically spurn them. Mother of one Laura knows this all too well.

While Laura’s stalker started with malicious communication, harassment, and damage to her property, it developed into a full-blown campaign of terror, whereby she had to watch her back at every turn.

“I tried to confuse her with my movements. You do start thinking; ‘Why is that happening to me?’ Every day I left the house in trepidation: Who’s watching me today?”

A 2023 study of 892 Irish people revealed stalkers were most commonly known to the respondents (partner or ex-partner) in just over half of cases.

However, the next most common perpetrator was categorised as a stranger (29%), and that’s exactly what Laura’s stalker was to her (“I didn’t know her from Adam”).

Businesswoman and mother of one, Laura first met Sonya Egan at a community meeting. A strong social justice advocate, Laura volunteered to be public relations officer for the group.

Naturally, her number was circulated to the attendees of the meeting.

“When I was elected, she made a beeline towards me and said she was a barrister and investigative journalist.”

After the introduction, Laura referred Sonya to the secretary to add her details to their “list of helpers”.

From that day onward, she sent Laura a barrage of texts.

“She was constantly messaging me. ‘What were we doing? How were we getting involved? Where were we meeting?’”

The intensity of Sonya’s texts escalated and, after about two weeks, her behaviour went from “eager” to “batsh*t.”

“The messages were getting weirder and weirder, and then I got a threat to say: ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ I’m being bullied by Sinn Féin [a representative of the party had also been at the meeting].”

Laura O'Connell: "You just never knew what were genuine messages and what was her." Pic: Larry Cummins

When Laura refused to validate or corroborate Sonya’s story, the cyberstalking amped up a notch.

“There were so many messages coming in from fake profiles. Her supposed ‘children’ were messaging me. You just never knew what were genuine messages and what was her.”

Laura sent an email to other members of her community group advising them to “keep a wide berth” of Sonya. That’s when she noticed her cyberstalker had become her physical stalker.

“She’d show up at meetings with potential clients and just stare. She was in my local coffee shop any time I was there. After a while, I realised she was always following me in the car or parked near me — anywhere I was.”

When Laura continued to ignore Sonya, her behaviour became more persistent.

“She was regularly at my house. She’d have others wait outside my house and follow me, and these were men,” she explains.

“The far right people we see in the public eye – they followed and watched and threatened – they would scare the bejesus out of you.”

A group of agitators would travel from all over the country to intimidate, harass, and stalk Laura.

“They’re videoing you and putting it up on social media.”

The lowest point was when they tried to attack her reputation as a fit mother.

“She got somebody to pose as a social worker who came to my house out of concern for my parenting skills. I made them tea and I gave them all my personal information. That was very scary.”

Laura O'Connell: “You’d keep changing the way you go to work or the gym. I’d drive around the block and go through a different estate.” Pic: Larry Cummins

Laura counts herself lucky that the garda working on her case, Sergeant John Sheehy, took her very seriously. However, a lot of women are not so fortunate.

“There were anonymous complaints going into Tusla about me. It was only months later I pieced together that they were all from her.

“They said I was drug dealing to minors, that I was running a brothel. She claimed I had kicked her door down and beat up her young son and her.”

In 2015, an EU wide survey on violence against women collated responses from 42,000 women. From those surveyed, 23% changed the phone number/email address and 14% moved home.

Laura was advised by Sgt Sheehy to meticulously document what happened in a diary, and to continuously switch up her routine.

“You’d keep changing the way you go to work or the gym. I’d drive around the block and go through a different estate.”

She expects to be dealing with the consequences for a long time.

“I’m still picking up those pieces. It did change me. I had to shut my business. The crippling costs in legal fees [reported as over €26,000], therapy, doctor’s fees.”

Keen to dissociate themselves from targeting from Laura’s stalker, her network of friends began to rapidly decline.

“My closest friends said it was all in my head. I was prescribed pills to help me sleep and calm my nervous system down.

“I thought I had a heart condition, but they were panic attacks.” Laura doesn’t believe justice has been served.

“There she is in prison. Probably getting a degree, getting psychological care, fed, and watered. I have nothing.”

'IT'S VERY UNNERVING'

“Stalking behaviours go beyond the commonly recognized forms,” Dr Ciara Staunton says.

A forensic psychologist, Dr Staunton is the co-author of the Stalking and Harrassment survey along with the vice dean of learning at the School of Law in UCC, Dr Catherine O’Sullivan.

Prompted by the watershed cases of Una Ring and Eve McDowell (featured in Stalked) who campaigned to make stalking a standalone criminal offence, this seminal research was supported by the Sexual Violence Centre Cork and Mary Crilly.

The four tenets of stalking discussed in the report are fixated, obsessive, unwanted, and repeated.

The process of stalking may involve some or all of the following: Unwanted behaviours, threats and abuse, malicious communications, and reputational damage.

“Over half of our participants highlighted appearing outside of your work or home as the most unwanted behavior. Being followed, loitering around — it’s very unnerving.”

Other stalking behaviours include taking photos or recordings without consent, sending private images of you that are of a very personal nature, sending unwanted gifts, spying on you or tracking your movements whether online or in person.

Author C.L. Taylor: “He sent letters, flowers, presents, photos. He’d stand outside my flat in the rain for hours on end.”

While abusers will often go to extreme lengths to keep victims silent, Cally (CL) Taylor has finally found her voice and she harnesses the intricacies of her experience in Every Move You Make.

It has taken her 15 years to speak on the subject, but she feels now is the time. If time is a healer, the wound it had to heal was gargantuan: A residual terror is palpable even down the phone — we stop several times for Cally to catch her breath through the tears.

In hindsight, the relationship thrived on lovebombing and gaslighting, quickly developing into a pattern of controlling and threatening behaviour.

“It’s insidious because at the beginning, they utterly charm you. I met my ex through a dating site, he matched me for every single interest I had.”

That feeling of elation was shortlived and it wasn’t long before narcissistic tendencies began to emerge.

It began with comments insinuating infidelity that spiralled from casual remarks to full-on demands that saw her buy a new bed, give up smoking, and forgo nights out and holidays.

The day they were supposed to move in together, Cally broke up with her partner. He snapped.

“I said: ‘I can’t do this. We need to split up.’ After that, the phone would ring and I’d ignore it and he would text me and say we needed to talk about it. That’s when the stalking began, the absolute bombardment...”

Cally describes how her ex-partner studied her vulnerabilities and preyed on them.

“I’m just under six foot tall. I’m a plus-size woman and I found it hard to meet men. He said I was going to be alone and unloved.” Cally was 34 at this point, three years older than her stalker.

“He would ring me all day and night… leave messages saying he saw me as a goddess, that no one would ever love me like he did.

“My worst fear was that I was never going to be a mother. He said: ‘That’s not going to happen for you anymore.’

“It was all lies.”

Cally unplugged her landline from the wall, but that didn’t deter her stalker.

“He sent letters, flowers, presents, photos. He’d stand outside my flat in the rain for hours on end.”

Whether it was pop culture’s influence or a personality disorder that motivated him, Cally’s stalker was an IT professional whose knowledge of geotracking and ability to conceal his true identity allowed him to go undetected for months.

“I had a private Twitter account. It wasn’t in my name, but he must have found it because I posted about going to a gig in London.

“When I turned up with my friend, I saw him in the middle of the crowd.”

Every Move You Make by C.L Taylor

Feeling a looming threat, she didn’t wait to find out what would happen if she confronted him — he had already been physically violent with her during the course of their relationship.

“He followed me off the tube, pushed me against a wall, and screamed at me.”

She needed to take practical steps to outsmart him.

“I was doing three days a week and working from home the rest of the time, and I had to say to my boss: ‘Can I please change the days that I come in?’ I couldn’t tell her that I was being stalked because it felt unprofessional and I didn’t want her to see me in any different way.”

The digital knowledge she’d garnered from running her own website placed Cally in a position of power.

“I had this stat counter on my website. I’d worked from his house before and I’d tagged his office and his home. So, if he was looking at my website from work, the name of his work would show up.”

“I knew when he was at work, I’d be safe to leave my house.

“That gave me a bit of control of my situation.”

• C.L Taylor’s latest novel, Every Move You Make, is published by AVON and out March 28. 
• A fundraiser has been established to help cover Laura O’Connell’s legal fees, you can find it at gofundme.com/f/laura-was-bullied-harassed-stalked