Joan Smith - As I please

IN THE past couple of weeks, the subject of stalking has been much discussed following the murder of a 15-year-old girl in the lift of the block of flats in London where she lived with her mother.

The family of Arsema Dawit has accused the Metropolitan Police of failing to protect her after they reported death threats, and the case is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Stalking is a dreadful crime, in which victims may endure years of harassment – letters, phone calls and unwanted “gifts” – even if it doesn’t escalate to actual physical violence.

In the midst of increasingly strident calls that MPs should be forced to reveal their private addresses, no one seems to have given much thought to the possibility that it will make them much more vulnerable to deranged people.

A few days ago, I happened to be talking to a minister who said quite matter-of-factly that she and other female MPs regularly get weird letters from total strangers who’ve seen them on television; so do journalists, film stars and people in public life generally, but we aren’t obliged to reveal where we live.

The minister went on to tell me about a classic instance of stalking behaviour, which began with intimate letters to her at the House of Commons and escalated to a parcel containing scented oil and candles.

By the time it arrived at her Westminster office, it had at least been checked and her staff knew it didn’t contain explosives.

In future, though, the man who sent it will be able to get hold of her address, write to her there and turn up at her home if he feels like it. So will any other individual who has a grievance against an MP or minister.

Only last weekend, a Cabinet minister, Harriet Harman, was forced to leave her house in south London when two men from Fathers4Justice got onto the roof in silly costumes.

This misogynist organisation has a history of targeting women ministers and Harman was apparently chosen because part of her brief is Women and Equality.

The stunt caused huge disruption, not just for Harman and her family, but her neighbours. One of the men remained on the roof overnight.

Four years ago, at a legal conference, a Fathers4Justice activist confronted another female minister, Margaret Hodge, and handcuffed himself to her.

He was later cleared of false imprisonment, even though Hodge was shocked and distressed by the incident. “If we are to protect and maintain democracy, people who are elected representatives must feel able to go about their business without fear of being physically assaulted”, she said.

Last year, when the same man appeared in court in connection with a Fathers4Justice stunt at Stonehenge, he claimed to have changed his name and insisted on being addressed throughout the proceedings as “Mrs Hodge”.

It’s outrageous that women in public life should be targeted in this way, and almost beyond belief that the courts are making it easier for individuals to reach them at home.

Obviously men are at risk as well, although they are slightly less likely to become victims; according to Home Office figures published in 2004, 8 per cent of women and 6 per cent of men said they had been subject to stalking in the previous year.

That amounts to 1.2 million women and 900,000 men, which makes stalking a frighteningly common crime.

Other research by the University of Leicester paints an even more alarming picture, suggesting that one in 20 men and one in five women will be affected by stalkers at least once in their lifetimes.

Cabinet ministers have police protection, but their junior colleagues do not. How long will it be before an MP or minister goes home alone at night to find a deranged individual waiting on her doorstep?

I’ve seldom known a moment when politicians are held in greater contempt, largely because of a series of allegations involving Tory MPs and MEPs, but the damage which began with the Derek Conway affair goes much wider.

In a culture where high levels of personal abuse are tolerated and even encouraged, especially on blogs and newspaper websites, contempt quickly turns into a kind of callousness.

You can see from the vicious insults directed against politicians that we live in a poisoned atmosphere which is even worse for democracy than it is for individuals.

Only a society with an almost paranoid distrust of politicians would expose them, without a second thought, to the unwanted attentions of obsessives, grudge-bearers and stalkers.