My speech as read by myself at the Home Office & ACPO Stalking Conference in London on December 9th 2010 about my 5-year online cyberstalking case. Fighting for justice for stalking victims.

1. 'ACPO Conference' (09.12.2010)
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Cyberstalking: My Five Year Ordeal
By Elle Richardson
Firstly, thank you for allowing me to speak today and thank you to the Home Office for
dealing with the concerns of stalking.
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If you experience a crime or a form of harassment offline you have the
opportunity to walk into a police station or dial 999 to report the event
with a hope that action can be taken and your safety can be assured. Online
it's a different story; there is no www.999.com, so to speak. Online people
can be anonymous; they can hide under any guise with the vast tools of
technology to conceal their identity making tracking them not such a
straightforward task.
When my cyberstalker began their hate campaign against me in early 2005 I
thought little more of it than it being one of the many internet trolls who
find harassing others and being offensive the best way to pass time online.
I'd experienced the hateful nature of anonymous internet pests many times
and witnessed others at the receiving end too. It was commonplace to see
a few trolls on a website and usually the best trick was to ignore them and
eventually they'd go away. My stalker didn't.

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One of their first abusive messages, on a music forum read "If you don't
respond I'm going to make your life hell and you won’t like it". Those
words are quite poignant in hindsight. At the time I blocked and reported
the user to the forum admin and they were banned. They persisted on
various other sites and new abuse would appear each day.
I was an aspiring singer/songwriter and I believe it was this that attracted
my stalker to me as they regularly attacked my skills and made offensive
and threatening remarks about my life.
After ongoing abuse in 2006 I went to the police. I was shocked that the
officer I spoke to didn't even know what an IP address was. I felt alone at
that moment and even though I made a full report I was made aware that it
was probably unlikely that they'd be able to track the individual harassing
me.
Every day I had to block, report and endure more attacks from the person
who was setting up various accounts and guises online to persistently
hound me. They would seek me out and continue their attack. The effect of
this started to take a toll on my personal life. I had suffered personal
struggles and already battled confidence problems so this ongoing abuse
really started to affect how I felt and dealt with life. I distanced myself from
friends and found it very hard to trust people as I was constantly wondering
who the person was harassing me. Was it was secretly someone I knew and
did everyone think these awful things of me? It gave me immense
insecurity from the paranoia the relentless abuse caused. The internet
really seemed like the ideal playground for this persons behaviour.
I was trying to promote my music so it wasn't feasible to remove my
websites and profiles and I couldn't change the name on these profiles as
the name represented my musical identity, but why should I have to give
up something I love because someone cannot control their behaviour
online, when it comes to respecting others?

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My confidence in my music dwindled and I found it harder to socialize as I
found the abuse had affected my confidence so much that I was starting to
dislike myself and lose faith in whom I could trust. It instilled a sense of
social-phobia within me which I still battle with to this day.
I didn’t talk about it much as people didn't understand. The few I did speak
to would often say “don’t use that website” or “turn the pc off”. Was the
resolution really resorting back to a pre-internet era where I cannot use it
without fear of being harassed at every given moment? Besides why was I,
the victim of this crime, the one having to stop everything they love and do
in life and not the offender?
2007-2008 I made several reports to the police but I’d be made aware that
it would be unlikely they’d be able to trace this person. During one visit the
police even witnessed the messages coming through. Friends witnessed it,
my family did too. They also witnessed the detrimental effects it had on
me.
In 2008 I started to get occasional death threats and messages making me
fear for my safety. I didn’t have a clue who or where this person was. For all
I knew it could have been someone round the corner from me or even
someone I knew with an ulterior motive. Turning the computer off did not
switch off my fear. I didn’t sleep much, became emotionally drained and I
started to lose a lot of weight from the stress.
With the support of a new boyfriend I began to log the messages from late
2008 because, after all this time I realised this person had no intention of
stopping and they even proudly proclaimed this in their messages. Every
day I would make logs of the emails and messages. It took over my life but I
knew if I ever wanted this to stop I had to gather evidence and persist with
the case. I never once responded to my stalker yet their abuse was in
abundance every day, often up to 20 or 30 messages of hate and threats on
a daily basis.

4. I finally closed the door on my music ventures. I was so worn out with how
the abuse surrounding it had taken over my life that every time I went to
do other music projects I instantly associated it with very difficult
memories. Essentially I had to say goodbye to something I loved very much
in life.
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My stalker created guises, used my photos and copied anything I had
written myself, in a semi-impersonation attempt to instill more paranoia.
They set up Facebook profiles using my surname, date of birth and
information and tried adding me. I blocked and reported them. They were
never removed, even to this day. YouTube’s report function was shockingly
poor as were other sites. Most reports would go into a spam filter and
wouldn't be read or dealt with. I literally felt like banging my head against
the keyboard. My stalker set up an incredible amount of hate and
impersonation profiles. They would post offensive comments about me,
trying to defame my name publicly. Each time I would block one they’d set
up a new one to send more abuse. It was an endless, vicious circle.
People asked how I knew it was always the same person. Well, after years
of the same messages you almost become accustomed to their phraseology
and style. I gained a huge sense of paranoia and fear from this and started
analysing people and life in a way that I’d never done before, and it took
over my life.
In 2009 I printed many pages of abuse for the police to see. They didn’t
seem to think they’d be able to catch the person though so it was a
breakthrough in 2009 when, on one forum, the stalker abused me and the
admin was kind enough to give me their IP address to help me. The IP
search came back as a Lancashire location and identified the computer as a
public one. I gave the IP address to the police. It turned out to be a library
in Lancashire. However, with the vast amount of users and computers the
IP resolved to it would take some considerable work to catch the person.
Lancashire County Council were asked to do this and I had to chase them

5. up several times as they still hadn’t done this a few weeks later. I was
passed from Hampshire to Lancashire police on numerous occasions.
In October 2009 I finally had the breakthrough to catch my stalker. They
sent me more abuse on the FriendsReunited website. This time the profile
had a name that seemed to be real. Their father was also linked to their
profile so it seemed this was genuine. According to the profile, this was a
29 year old woman and someone I’d never heard of before. Shaking, I tried
to take it in. This is probably the person who has made my life hell for so
many years. I was angry yet happy to finally have something to go on. I
messaged her father saying his daughter had been harassing me for many
years online. His response was not of “my daughter wouldn’t do that”;
instead he simply said “She’s banned from using computers in our house,
go to the police”. That said it all. As soon as I said her name to the police
they knew who she was instantly and she was no stranger to them. Finally, I
had found my stalker.
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She was arrested in November 2009. She didn’t deny the charges and gave
no reason as to why she did it. I wasn’t the only one to receive her abuse.
I’d seen her personally attack others under her profiles before and I
discovered that she was banned from a BBC message board for posting
abuse to other users. How was this woman able to do all of this and not be
caught before?
The police contacted me soon after and told me that she had learning
difficulties and, to quote the officer “the mental age of a 14 year old” and
could not be prosecuted. Instead they said she was cautioned and banned
from using public computers. I was disgusted. This woman had taken over
my life for five years. I said “A 14 year old knows it’s wrong to send death
threats!”. Why wasn’t she being monitored if she was known for this kind
of behaviour? How was someone who had learning difficulties able to go to
a library alone every day to sit for hours sending this kind of abuse to
people?

6. I complained but they couldn’t go beyond a caution and the officer assured
me she wouldn’t re-offend. Unfortunately he was wrong. In July 2010 my
stalker re-offended by signing up to iTunes under my music name and
posting over 1,000 music reviews with abusive and offensive content aimed
at other users. Basically, she was back defaming my name. Shaking and in
tears I sat for four hours that night logging the abuse for the police.
My stalker was re-arrested in August 2010 and finally I got a three year
restraining order against her and she was fined. But how and why did this
take five years of hell to get a resolution? Why are people allowed so much
anonymity online if they are so actively abusing it? I understand it’s not
feasible to police the entire internet but I do believe every website has a
duty to moderate it’s content and if something has been flagged up as
abusive then it should be removed and if not the police should be able to
intervene to enforce removal, especially if someone’s private details are
included with the abuse. This kind of content can serve to completely ruin
peoples’ lives.
I've had personal details posted on public websites, emails hacked and
edited in defamatory ways and even had people parodying my stalker, all
because some people feel they’ll have no consequences to face as a result
of their actions. Some admins on websites seem to even think it’s funny to
keep the content online because it draws in visitors. How is this resolved?
Are the police then able to enforce removal? In addition, the more time it
takes to remove the content the more people see it and the more damage
it can effectively have on someone’s life.
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The internet is a huge part of our everyday lives, professionally and socially
and online harassment is an evolving crime. As technology progresses so
should the law. Had this been an option back in 2005 then maybe I
wouldn’t have suffered for so long and maybe I’d still be doing music now
instead of trying to rebuild and find my way again.
For the first time in years I felt proud of myself that I’d managed to close a

7. very dark chapter in my life. Back when it first started in 2005 never did I
believe I’d be able to catch this person but finally I feel I can try to move
forward and I hope that my story helps other people who have suffered the
same.
Stalkers know no boundaries. Stalkers have no rules other than to
intimidate and strike fear into their victim. Whether it’s countless letters in
the post, offensive text messages, scary phone calls, threatening emails or
abuse on public forums; persistent abuse via any format are all forms of
unwanted and harassing communication and should be viewed as such.
Online, stalkers can hide, they can attack and have a sense of on-going
satisfaction that they’ll probably never be caught. This has to change.
For five years my cyberstalker took over my life and now, after my ordeal is
over, I am here to tell my story and hopefully bring about change.
Thank you for listening.