NEW LAW HOPE

I was preparing for my own murder, says stalking survivor as victims recount how obsessive prowlers ruined their lives

Today, we look at three people whose lives have been destroyed by stalkers

• Published: 8:00, 11 Feb 2024

• Published: Invalid Date,

A STALKING victim has revealed Gardai offered to lock him up for the night after he continuously complained of being harassed, while another survivor said: “I was preparing for my murder.”

A new documentary looks at stalking, which was only signed into law as a crime last year.

Before that, people could be convicted under the crime of harassment.

For Jarlath Rice, it was so serious he had to flee the country after his stalker was fined after attacking him in the street.

And Una Ring would scrub the house clean every night so that if she was killed, forensics would be able to find the evidence more easily.

A week after the murder of Ashling Murphy in January 2022, Justice Minister Helen McEntee sought to bring in legislation to make stalking a stand-alone crime, with a sentence of up to ten years.

It came into effect in November.

The minister said: “My hope is we send a very clear signal to people that this behaviour is not OK – that if you stalk someone there’s a very clear legal pathway for you to be convicted and potentially face prison.

“My objective is that victims will come forward knowing the law is there to support them and get them justice.”

Today, we look at three people whose lives have been destroyed by stalkers.

EVE MCDOWELL

CAMPAIGNING for over a year with fellow survivor Una Ring, Eve McDowell was instrumental in bringing about changes in the law.

It followed her stalker, Igor, breaking into her home with a hammer.

The Sligo woman had moved to Galway in 2018 for college and recognised Igor from around the area, and said they were “acquaintance levels”.

She began to worry when he followed her into the city to the shops, waited outside and then followed her home. But people assured her it wasn’t a big deal, until he then started walking by the shop she worked all the time.

A friend found his Tinder profile, which showed him with knives.

As stalking wasn’t considered a crime then, Gardaí would just ask if he had hurt her physically.

One day, he stalked her as she went to work, lunch and later to a pub where she met a friend.

When her friend confronted him, they mentioned that he was easily recognisable with his hair and beard.

Three days later, someone tried to open the door of her home and she saw him in the bushes, with his hair, beard and eyebrows shaved off.

She said: “I was stunned because I thought, ‘If he’s done this, he could do anything’. I was trying to convince the Garda that my life was at risk.”

Broke in armed with a hammer

But it all came to a head one night, when her housemate opened the balcony door to let in fresh air and Igor snuck into the room, armed with a hammer.

Eve recalled: “I was pushing furniture up against the door because I thought this was it, I’m gone. He ran towards my housemate with a hammer, hit her on the hands and tried to hit her head. She managed to get the hammer off him, at which point he jumped off the balcony.”

Guards found him crawling, injured, up the road near the estate.

He pled guilty to aggravated burglary and harassment and spent nearly four years in prison. He was released in September last year.

Eve said it is “frightening” knowing he is out there and could find her.

She received a blank text from an unknown number and an Instagram account called IamFollowingYou attempted to follow her.

She told the documentary: “I am definitely in a fearful state still. Where do I go from here?”

IRISH STALKING STATISTICS

• 1 in 3 Irish women are stalked at some point
• 82 per cent of stalkers are known to their victims
• 87 per cent of stalkers in Ireland are men
• 1 in 6 men experience stalking in Ireland

UNA RING

THE documentary showed Una scrubbing her house “in case a forensic team ever had to come in”.

She explained: “I was preparing for my murder.”

Una was stalked by her former co-worker James Steele, who is due for release in April.

He was caught by Gardaí outside her home in Youghal, Cork, in the middle of the night with a crowbar in his hand and a dildo strapped to him.

The pair got to know each other when they worked together, but Una said initially there “wasn’t a single red flag”.

One day, he asked her to give him a hand with an open day and when she arrived, he pinned her arms and tried to kiss her several times.

She fought him off, but to avoid angering him said: “You’re a very nice man, but I’m not interested in a relationship with anybody.”

He apologised in a text the next day, but became obsessed, harassing her with messages.

She ignored them until one said he was coming to her house.

Una found her car tyres painted pink and less than a week later, someone had drawn a game of X and Os on her window, along with the words, “I win”.

Then she found a letter on her windscreen containing two condoms and a threatening message.

Identifiable tattoo

By now Una was thinking of getting a tattoo on her hip with her name, date of birth and town in case she was murdered and her body wasn’t found immediately.

Gardaí told her to install cameras and days later they showed him leaving another note on her car.

This one was even more vulgar. It said she had two options — leave her door open so they could have consensual sex, or he would rape her and her daughter.

She said: “You feel so out of your depth. You’re waiting for something bad to happen and you kind of know it’s going to happen.”

On 27 July 2020, Una said she “had a feeling he was coming that night” and Gardaí parked an unmarked car two doors down.

She went to bed fully dressed with her shoes on and, at around 3.45am, officers found him approaching her door with a crowbar in his hand.

As well as this and the dildo, he had latex gloves on, a lock-picking device, duct tape and a rope. He admitted he intended to rape her.

He pled guilty to harassment and attempted trespass with the intent to commit rape. Una still doesn’t feel safe and finds it hard to leave her home.

She said: “In April, I will be a wreck when he comes out.”

JARLATH RICE

AS a man, Jarlath said being stalked “is very humiliating” as people told him “sort it out yourself”.

He had to flee to the UK to escape his stalker of ten years, who bombarded him with more than 20,000 messages and calls — but she then followed him to Brighton.

It began when Jarlath was in a Dublin cafe and returning from the toilet, he found a note from a woman, Lina Tantash, asking if she could join him.

He said he found this “kind of cute and a bit funny” so the pair got chatting and he said she seemed “bubbly” and “interesting”. She gave him her number and he said he “didn’t get any crazy vibes”.

But after a short relationship of less than a month, he called it off, something she didn’t seem to grasp.

Jarlath said: “She would turn up wherever I was. I’d come out sometimes at night and she’d be driving by, or I would cycle to work and she would cross my path.

“The penny dropped — I realised that when I was going to meet my mates for a pint, watch a game of football or something, and she was there, it was because she had hacked into my phone messages.”

He started to get constant calls, messages and emails begging him to unblock her and even offering him money to give her another chance. Despite changing his number repeatedly, she always got it.

She left him a love contract, which said he had to answer every time she called, always tell the truth, get engaged to her in three months and married within a year.

Jarlath said she threatened suicide, and he filmed her kicking in his door in 2012.

“I called the police so many times. The Guard said if I called again, he would lock me up for the night — problem solved.”

In April 2014, he left his apartment with his girlfriend and Lina was in a car across the street.

Fled to the UK

“Suddenly, Lina was out of the car screaming at my girlfriend, ‘Leave him alone, he’s mine’. She was physically attacking me, she tore my shoulder socket out. I felt it pop and I was in agony. She tried to put me through a plate glass window. I did think she was going to kill me.”

She pled guilty to a Section 2 assault and threatening behaviour in a public place and was fined.

Jarlath fled to the UK to escape her and got a job in a college, but a year later, she found him and flooded him with messages.

He recalled: “She said she would contact the Department of Education and say I was a paedophile.”

He said she also threatened his four-year-old nephew and said she would “tear him limb from limb”.

“You begin to think, if I took myself out of this picture then it would all go away.”

But after she followed him in England, he reported it to the police there, where stalking has been a crime since 2012.

She was sentenced to four years behind bars and was released in 2022.

He said: “If I hadn’t moved to the UK, I don’t think I would have survived.”

• Stalked airs on Virgin Media One on Monday at 9pm.