Exclusive – The Met Police have apologised to a stalking victim after she experienced months of delays before her case was taken seriously. Now she wants other victims to know what it took to get her stalker arrested
It was EastEnders that saved Emma (not her real name). For five months she had reported her stalker to the Met Police, but the response was the same: “We have spoken to them, told them to stop their behaviour. That should be enough.”
At its worst, Emma’s stalker called her more than 90 times a day, waited in a car outside her home, and sent threatening and abusive messages like “I’m going to find you” and “You will always be an old hag who can’t have babies”.
After suffering recurrent miscarriages, the last comment felt like a “physical assault”. “I collapsed, went into a complete heap,” said Emma, 45, “Because I felt my life was just being used for someone’s gratification of humiliating and twisting, and I had no power to make it stop.”
When a number for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s National Stalking Helpline appeared on her TV – after an EastEnders episode about Theo Hawthorne’s disturbing obsession with Stacey Slater – the charity, set up in the name of a murdered estate agent, helped Emma realise her stalker needed urgent police attention.
“[The Suzy Lamplugh Trust] made me aware that I only ever had to have two incidents of unwanted behaviour for [the Met] to have actually taken it a lot more seriously,” she told MyLondon, “I don’t want to diss the police at all, because they have been really conscious, but actually, by that point, I had 30 odd incidents.”
Emma is among the one in seven people aged over 16 in England and Wales who have been a victim of stalking. London recorded nearly 12,000 cases in 2022/23 alone, and the figures are rising – more than 11-fold since 2016.
A 2022 super complaint by Suzy Lamplugh Trust, about the response of police forces to stalking, triggered a London-wide investigation by the Mayor’s Office of Policing and Crime (MOPAC), which identified police failures that left victims feeling ‘scared and frustrated’.
A line from the subsequent London Stalking Review , published in 2024, rings true for Emma’s case especially: “Police continue to treat incidents as single events, meaning stalking goes unrecognised and patterns of behaviour are not properly understood.”
Under the Protection from Harassment Act (1997) , a “course of conduct” only requires two incidents of ‘Fixated, Obsessive, Unwanted and Repeated’ behaviour for it to be considered a crime. Emma says she made at least six police reports before contacting the charity.
Only by compiling a detailed spreadsheet of all the incidents, along with an email from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust directly to the investigating officer, did Emma finally grab the Met’s attention. Her case was one of the few that make it to court. For the dataset studied by MOPAC, only 12 per cent of cases were submitted to the CPS and only nine per cent were charged.
For victims whose reports continue to be downplayed or wrongly classified (8 in 10 coded offences were not initially identified as stalking), the consequences are devastating. The randomised data studied by the London Stalking Review found 45 per cent of stalking victims withdrew from the justice process and 41 per cent were NFAd.
‘They could hear the voicemails’
Emma’s story began in 2022, when a long-term friendship tipped over into a physical relationship at a time when she was feeling vulnerable. Emma and her male friend had their romance, but then they both moved on.
This is where most stories about stalking describe how an ex-lover became obsessed: turning up at her house uninvited, lurking around her social media, and calling incessantly on a private number.
That’s all true. It all happened to Emma. But this time it wasn’t her ex.
When that man attempted to be honest with another woman about his love life, it lit an angry flame that left Emma feeling suicidal and Chareen Moreno-Moore in handcuffs.
“She was just ferocious and that was the day it just took off, after him trying to be good, and be transparent, and she just took complete offence and [saying things like] ‘Even when he’s not my man, he’s still my man’,” said Emma.
The stalking campaign began on December 3, 2022, a day Emma remembers clearly because she attended the police station in person after a “relentless” barrage of phone calls.
“I was stood in the police station showing them the fact she had sent me threatening voicemails, and was parked outside my property… The phone they could see. They could hear the voicemails being left,” said Emma.
It took three weeks for police to contact her again on December 23, by which time her case officer assured her they had told Moreno-Moore to stop.
Emma has since learned an intervention by a police officer is usually enough to end this sort of harassment – the people who continue are the ones who need the full force of the law.
And it did continue: from January, through the winter and into early spring, by which time Emma says she was “desperate” for help. In March, Emma says Moreno-Moore was posting information about her online, and made contact with her son on Instagram.
Though she continued logging reports with police, Emma says the response remained, in her own words, something like: “Yeah, we know it’s unacceptable. We’ve spoken to them. Hopefully that helps.”
It was only after watching the stalking storyline on EastEnders that Emma picked up the phone to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust and learned how to present her case to a police officer.
Though the charity specifically advises against delaying police reports, or taking any action for the sole purpose of investigation (it can be ‘extremely dangerous’), the instructions in the victim guidebook resemble the sort of work you would expect from an officer.
Taking this advice in April, Emma compiled a spreadsheet listing each stalking incident in painful detail, joining the dots where police had failed. When she showed it to the officer dealing with her case, Emma says: “They were shocked at how far it got.”
Emma still felt like “a sitting target” though, as she had to wait another week for police to sign off a warrant, then two months before Moreno-Moore was arrested boarding a flight to Spain. When police finally seized her devices, it became apparent that offences of harassment and malicious communications would not cover the full scale of her criminality.
Moreno-Moore, 34, was charged with one count of stalking involving serious alarm and distress – “namely calling on withheld numbers and leaving voicemails, calling from unknown numbers, driving and parking in the victim’s road, displaying her personal details on her own social media accounts without permission”.
At Westminster Magistrates’ Court she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison suspended for 18-months in October this year, along with 35 hours of rehabilitation activity requirement and a two-year restraining order.
‘If they had been male, they would have been straight on it’
Emma’s persistence in getting her case solved involved physically attending a police station to show officers her phone; collecting photos of her stalker’s car outside her property; and leveraging the help of a specialist service to get the point across.
Despite her efforts, police never issued a Stalking Protection Order (SPO) , a civil order that was first introduced in 2020 that can prevent a suspected stalker entering a defined area or making contact by any means, as well as compelling them to hand over their devices.
Emma claims she raised the idea of an SPO, but she says officers suggested ‘Let’s just see how we go with what we’ve got at the moment’. As a result, Emma believes more training is needed to make officers aware of their own powers.
Emma’s belief is backed up by MOPAC’s research, which shows the Met missed its SPO target by 20 per cent in 2022, while “some officers don’t know what they are”.
Emma also believes police are missing a trick when it comes to female perpetrated stalking.
Though exceedingly rare – nine out of 10 stalkers charged or cautioned by the Met are male – Emma said her Suzy Lamplugh Trust advisor quashed the misconception that stalking is always perpetrated by men and linked to a romantic relationship.
An academic paper cited by the College of Policing found “female relational stalkers perpetrated elevated rates of moderate violence” and that there are “no gender differences for severe violence”.
Despite these risks, research by MOPAC’s deep dive into the issue found cases involving female stalkers were underreported and not achieving the same justice outcomes – cases with a female suspect were nine times more likely to be NFAd than a male.
Asked if she thought police would have taken a male stalker more seriously, Emma said: “Absolutely. I do… I hate to say that because I don’t want to dismiss the hard work of the case officer, he’s always been very diligent and kept me updated as much as possible, but I do know that if they had been male, [the Met] would have been straight on it.”
Met Police apologise to victim
A Metropolitan Police spokesperson said: “Stalking is an invasive and traumatic crime which the Met takes incredibly seriously. We would like to apologise to the victim for the delays she has experienced, throughout the investigation and waiting for an outcome, as they do not reflect the Met’s targets for dealing with stalking incidents.
“The Met is committed to securing justice and protection for victims of stalking. There are currently 435 active Stalking Protection Orders within London, which is an increase from 285 in February 2024. The rate of positive outcomes following a report of stalking has reached 11.6 per cent – a 6.3 per cent improvement over the last 12 months.
“To improve the experience of victims, officers are using technology to speed up investigations and recognise patterns of offending, new recruits are receiving dedicated training on Stalking Awareness and Victim Blaming Language, and we are working alongside partners to reduce reoffending. This is alongside developing a new Victim Strategy to increase the frequency and quality of our communications for victims of VAWG offences.”
A spokesperson for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust said: “Many of the people who contact our service experience multiple incidents of stalking before they seek help but our specially trained independent stalking advocates can help with safety planning at the earliest possible opportunity to ensure the risks are managed before behaviours escalate.
“For those who want to seek justice through the criminal justice system this can be a long and daunting process but we can provide support at every step of the way.
“We would encourage anyone who thinks they may be affected by stalking to contact the National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0300 or complete our ‘Am I being Stalked Tool’ to seek help: National Stalking Helpline online tool ‘Am I Being Stalked?'”
*Some names have been changed
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