'Stalking still not a criminal offence, and that needs to change'

Senator Lisa Chambers said current laws on harassment do not adequately protect women, and pointed to other jurisdictions which saw an increase in prosecutions and convictions when stalking was made a standalone offence. File picture: Conor McCabe Photography

Fianna Fáil has introduced a bill to make stalking a standalone criminal offence under Irish law, with a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Senator Lisa Chambers said current laws on harassment do not adequately protect women, and pointed to other jurisdictions which saw an increase in prosecutions and convictions when stalking was made a standalone offence.

 "Remarkably, still today in Ireland in 2021, stalking is not a criminal offence, and that's something we want to change.

Hopefully in time, we will have stalking on the statute books as a standalone criminal offence. There's a couple of reasons that we want to do this: We don't think that the word 'harassment' sufficiently describes or articulates what victims of stalking have been through.

"It doesn't display the gravity of the offence or the seriousness of the crime, or more importantly the impact on the victim.

Ms Chambers said it was important that legislators listened to women "and historically in this country we have not been very good at doing that and we have to frame our laws and modernise our laws in response to what victims have been through.

"It’s repeated unwanted behaviours that show an intensity, obsession and create intense fear within the victim. So it’s a step up from what is currently there as the impact on the victim is far more severe."

On Wednesday, she moved the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person (Amendment) (Stalking) Bill to the second stage in the Seanad.

The bill seeks to introduce a standalone offence of ‘stalking’ into lrish law by providing for a specific offence of stalking characterised by "repeated, unwanted behaviour that occurs as a result of fixation or obsession and causes alarm, distress or harm to the victim and to provide for related matters".

Ms Chambers noted that in other jurisdictions, such as England, Scotland and Wales, where stalking has been a standalone offence for more than two decades, there had been a significant impact on the number of cases reported, and the number of people charged with the offence.

"The number of people that were prosecuted, in England and Wales, when this became a standalone offence, there was a trebling of reporting of stalking between 2014 and 2018.

"So there's a real, practical implication for making this a standalone offence in that we will see an increase in prosecutions, we will see an increase in people charged, and we will see an increase in perpetrators behind bars for what they have done to their victims, and only then will we see true justice for people that have experienced this ordeal.

Una Ring: 'The end result of stalking is either rape or murder.' File picture: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Cork Courts Limited

Una Ring, who spoke alongside Ms Chambers and was subjected to a six-month campaign of harassment, which included threats of rape, said  "harassment" does not cover the behaviour she was subjected to.

“As far as I’m concerned, it was harassment when he was messaging me," she said.

When someone is creeping around your house to the point where you have to get in CCTV cameras, where you have to have the guard sitting outside, that’s above and beyond harassment.

"Harassment is more of an annoyance, stalking is very, very sinister. The end result of stalking is either rape or murder. Whereas the end result for somebody harassing somebody is about getting inside someone’s head and freaking them out."