Stalking is a workplace security issue, and one for security managers to handle with IT and HR, says the chief of a personal safety charity that practices what it preaches. Mark Rowe reports.
Rachel Griffin, pictured, of the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, says that if you talk to a large group of people about stalking, someone will disclose that it has happened to them, or someone that they know. For all the reported cases of stalking, including some that have ended in murder, she queries if society really understands how serious it is, and how scary and how potentially dangerous. As she says, some may still joke about it: “People say, ‘lucky you’, or ‘I wish I had someone obsessed with me’. It isn’t romantic and it isn’t funny. You feel you can’t go out of the house or to work, without someone following you, monitoring you. It’s horrid, it absolutely destroys people’s lives.” And it’s against the law. While readers may agree, they may ask; what does this have to do with security management? That was addressed by the charity’s latest campaign against stalking and to raise awareness of the issue, that focused on stalking in the workplace. A conference in London ran on the same day as Professsional Security’s ST14 South conference in Bristol.
Going by the experience of people who have contacted the trust, the biggest single group of people stalked – mainly women, but men too – Rachel says will be those stalked by their ex-partner. Quite apart from the fact that many meet their partner in their workplace, a place of work is a place for the stalker to work as much as anywhere else. Consider that a worker may well go to the same office or factory at the same time each weekday, by the same route, and back, so that a stalker may see the workplace as the place to start. A smaller but still significant group of those stalked are victims of a work colleague, she adds. “And of course that’s particularly difficult; you have somebody who is bothering you, but you have met at work.” Rachel recalled that Tracey Morgan, one of the speakers at the trust’s April conference, and who has campaigned against and talked openly about being a victim of stalking, met the person who became her stalker at work. A 1990s campaign led to the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. As for reported cases, readers can do their own internet searches into Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared presumed murdered in 1986; and the murder of Clare Bernal, at Harvey Nichols department store in 2005, whose stalker was a security officer at the store. “The workplace is a vulnerable place,” Rachel says.
It does not end there. A stalker may have a professional relationship with somebody who then stalks them, Rachel adds, because the stalker feels resentful, or rejected. “One phenomenon is the patient who stalks their doctor and it begins from a sense of begrudgement, that they didn’t get the service they were entitled to or they feel hurt. A professional relationship quite appropriately for a certain amount of time and then legitimately ends; they might feel rejected by that person and they will carry on pursuing them.” Many of the difficulties in resolving stalking arise: how or when does the professional – social worker, lecturer – know when the everyday niggles of the job cross the grey area and become excessive, unlawful stalking? And once the stalked person feels a threshold has been crossed, will the employer? And how will the employer respond? And which department – human resources, or security? Hence the Suzy Lamplugh Trust’s campaign, ‘to encourage employers to see stalking within their purview of health and safety at work’. Just as stalking may spill over from private life into work, or the other way, so a difficulty of handling stalking is that responsibility may spill over into HR. For the sake of work performance, the victim needs to be supported. However, it’s not against the law to send someone a bunch of flowers, or a letter or a text message. Stalking is a matter of pattern of behaviour – according to the 1997 Act, it’s two or more incidents. As Rachel says, there are cases where the stalker is not sending one text but a hundred, or a thousand. “And what we also know about stalking is that what starts off with this quite small incident can escalate into some very serious violence.” Take domestic homicides, where a relationship has ended, and a partner – most often, but not always, the woman – has left, but the other partner pursues. As Rachel adds, that is one of the reasons why when police do DASH – domestic abuse stalking and honour based violence – risk-assessments, stalking is one of those recorded risks. And hence women’s refuges. And indeed the National Stalking Helpline and guides online for being safe – whether as a lone worker, a student, travelling for work or on the street, or selling a property (as an estate agent or a householder) among others.
What can or should the employer of someone stalked do? Rachel speaks of the employer believing the victim: “Because a lot of victims will have self-doubt: ‘am I imaging this? Am I silly?’” She suggests having a well-briefed HR team that can show they are listening; and simple, practical things such as walking someone from and to their car at the beginning and end of the working day. “Another thing we recommend that organisations do is that if there is one available, circulate a description or photograph of the stalker, because we have all been told, ‘don’t let anyone in the door behind you’ and ‘ask for credentials’, but actually people, I don’t think, are going to do that, that much. But if they know there is somebody they need to be looking out for, I think the workforce would respond to that very well.”
As for what the security manager can do, Rachel speaks of the relationship between security and HR needing to be close, for instance offering the victim an alternative places to work. “One thing we say to people a lot is vary your route to work, vary the time,” because the stalker will obsessively fixate on a pattern of behaviour. Some jobs are more vulnerable to the stalker than others, depending on whether the worker has one desk or dots between several offices, or indeed none if they work from home or are in the field. Interesting here is that the good advice to counter stalking also holds good for other threats, such as tiger kidnap for bank staff and other key-holders who may be kidnapped or have their families held hostage so that criminals can make them open banks or safes. The Suzy Lamplugh Trust offers training on personal safety, ‘and it isn’t that unusual for us to be called in to deliver training when sadly an incident has occurred’, Rachel says. The opening or closing of a workplace such as a shop, or when cash is taken to a bank, may be the vulnerable time. A sense of personal safety applies to stalking as to safe cash in transit. She gives also an example of a consultation exercise when a company wanted to carry out a development. Rachel was able to advise on basic personal safety for those carrying out the consultation in the community. For instance, the company might want to protect the identity of those doing the consultation, in case someone holds a grudge against the development and takes it out on whoever they’ve met from the company. And if, let’s say, the person with a grudge takes a name from an ID badge, can they then find out personal details about the worker from social media – home address, friends and friends’ addresses, where and when they’ve gone on holiday? Do we take care over who we like on Facebook, and social media settings? Because social media, which exists to make connections, can make the stalker’s life easy.
As for the ‘online element’, Rachel says it’s unreasonable and unrealistic to tell people not to use social media: “We need people to be aware of the risks they are taking, so they are informed choices.” Is there more stalking than ever? Rachel doesn’t know, but she does make the point that the ‘channels’, the ways that a stalker can stalk, are much more diverse. The very ease of text messaging and emails suits a stalker. As Rachel says, physically writing and posting 500 letters was difficult. But sending 500 texts is easy, and social media are easier still. And again, work can be one of the stalker’s main routes into cyber-stalking. Being stalked at work can involve emailing. Another thing, she adds, is that the stalker of a work colleague may aim to discredit the victim. The stalker’s modus operandi may be to go to the victim’s employer – or the employer may indeed be the stalker – and make vexatious complaints. This only adds to the stress on the victim as they are already anxious and may have gone to HR in their own defence. Yet being stalked may well affect the victim’s performance at work; a cycle may develop. Rachel says: “We reckon about three-quarters of the people we talk to are being talked by some digitally-assisted means. That can involve text-messaging, Facebook, email, whatever, and it isn’t the case that you have stalkers who stalk through cyber-stalking and then you have other stalkers.” Just as our lives now combine online and offline, at work and home, so a stalker may do both; online malicious gossip and in person. “That’s where I suppose you also need in the workplace an integration between security and whoever is dealing with IT, particularly in large organisations; you would expect the IT department to have a clear understanding of their responsibilities towards staff around cyber-stalking.” Again, good IT security against stalking also applies to securing a workplace against other threats, such as hackers and emails with dangerous attachments. And being careful about who you give your work email address to addresses the threat from a stalker, and an intruder, whether an industrial spy or the social engineer who (as penetration tests, featured in the April and June issues of Professional Security show) gathers emails and other pieces of information to build up knowledge to get yet more and to even infiltrate, physically or through the IT network, a site. Rachel Griffin suggests that employees might understand more the reason for data security, because of cases of cyber-stalking. Here too is a link between facilities management (FM) and security and stalking; the FM manager in charge of a building may control access and identity cards, to keep the unauthorised out.
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust is looking for what Rachel calls ‘centres of excellence’, employers who can show they have taken steps in this area. She argues for enlightened self-interest; an employer by dealing with stalking can avoid staff anxiety and time off, besides doing it for ethical, moral and legal, duty of care, reasons. That said, while some employers attended the April conference, most people in the room were from the voluntary and statutory sectors, police and others in social welfare and criminal justice, ‘and we need to see that balance shifting’, Rachel says. Police, like employers, need to take the issue more seriously, she suggests. Some victims tell the helpline that they are told by police to ignore it, or that it’s difficult to investigate – which Rachel calls ‘rubbish’. As she says, it’s unrealistic to say, don’t look at your emails (work or home – and the two may overlap anyway). And how hard is it to search for emails?! Likewise, while some employers are helpful, some are not. Significantly, helpfulness or not may be only partly in terms of procedure – should an employer turn to the police? Should the victim be offered a different workplace – but how reasonable is it to expect the victim to change their life? Shouldn’t the stalker change their behaviour? Helpfulness, or not, is partly human; do colleagues show sympathy?
As for security staff, who may be the ones on the door, who may see the stalker on the pavement or in the car park, Rachel makes the point that this is a threat posed by someone who may well be obsessively fixated on the victim, but the stalker may present a risk to others – such as the guard denying access. “The thing about stalkers, generally speaking, and this is what I think separates stalking from other sorts of harassment, is that somebody has an obsessive fixation in pursuing that individual; you have to understand this is not necessarily somebody behaving rationally.” The stalker may well target others, perhaps many others, around their victim, if only to gain information. Because once victimised, the person stalked is not going to say much. Workplace colleagues, the same as friends, ought to be careful about what information they give out. The trust is: “We are ever quite careful about saying somebody has left for the day. Our policy is that we don’t put somebody through on the phone without asking who is calling.”
