My stalker moved in next door: Cyber Stalking exposed
Journalist Victoria Glover shares her experience as a victim of cyber stalking to mark National Stalking Awareness Week.
Last updated 22nd Apr 2025
Discovering that your life is under the microscope of a person you’ve never met is a jarring experience. It can cause feelings of paranoia, fear, anxiety and suspicion.
It’s what happened to Victoria Glover in 2021, when she found hundreds of online messages from a man she’d never met, in the ‘requests’ section of her Facebook Messenger.
I was being cyberstalked.
As a journalist, she’d been privy to the statistics around this crime for many years; 1 in 5 women and roughly 1 in 11 men will be a victim of stalking at some point in their lives.
But finding herself on the receiving end of bombardment, threats and intrusion was a different experience altogether.
In most cases, the victim will know the identity of their stalker – an estimated 21% are stalked by a partner or ex-partner. Cases of stranger stalking are much less common.
But Victoria’s experience isn’t unique. 1.5 million people across the UK reported being stalked to police in the year ending March 2024. Of those, 42% were targeted on their electronic devices.
Victoria said: “When I was in that inbox, I saw a name that I didn’t recognise. I don’t think I could ever have imagined what I was about to open when I clicked on it, but there were hundreds, and hundreds of messages from a man who I had no idea who he was. But he seemed to know an awful lot about me.
“In the space of 48 hours he’d sent something like 240 emails to my work email address."
"He sent me an explicit video of himself in a dark room, pulling his pants down. To know that it had been made with me in mind was awful.”
Victoria reported her stalker to the police, he pleaded guilty, and was ultimately sentenced to an indeterminate hospital order. It falls under the Mental Health Act and means there’s no fixed date for detention in hospital; the offender is discharged when they are deemed fit to be integrated back into society.
Knowing that her stalker was in treatment was the moment she should have been able to relax. But what she was about to discover would add another layer of trauma to her experience...
The secure mental health unit chosen for her stalker’s rehabilitation was 300 meters away from where she was living at the time.
In the first of our brand new three part podcast series, you can hear how Victoria's story unfolded, and how her stalker moved in next door:
Paladin is one of the leading support charities for victims of stalking. The service ensures that high risk victims of stalking are supported and that a coordinated community response is developed locally to keep victims and their children safe.
"Home doesn’t feel safe anymore."
Rachel is one of Paladin’s Independent Stalking Advocates, who says the stigma around stalking still exists: ”There’s still this idea that it’s some frightening dark figure down a back alley when you’re walking, but it’s not. It’s all consuming because of the world that we live in. You’ve got your phone, your devices, your smart home. People are living in a hyper-vigilant, anxious, fearful state constantly. Home doesn’t feel safe anymore because phones are going off, we’ve had cases where smart homes are being tampered with, people are logging on to watch TV at night and, especially in ex-partner cases, we’ve had messages that have been left on Netflix; it’s everywhere for some people.
Louise is the CEO of Paladin in East Lancashire: “All of the things that we have on our phones or the devices that we have in our properties are all set up for good: Find my Friends, Life 360, all those apps, however the problem we have is that anything like that can be used for someone who’s obsessed and wanting information. So when they’re in the wrong hands they can be used quite badly.”
If you think you might be a victim of stalking, speak to your local police force, and find a list of support services available below:
Paladin - National Stalking Advocacy Service.
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust - National Stalking Helpline: 0808 802 0300
Victim Support - Stalking and Harassment.