About our Trust

The Alice Ruggles Trust is a Registered Charity. Following our transformation into a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), our Registration number (formerly 1175316) has changed to 1186309.

Our mission statement

The Alice Ruggles Trust exists to raise awareness of stalking (including coercive control), to ensure that relevant legislation is effective and adhered to, and to bring about lasting improvements in the management of perpetrators and the protection of victims.

We aim to prevent what happened to Alice happening to others, by:

  • raising awareness of coercive control and stalking and their dangers;
  • working to ensure that stalking offences result in immediate action both to protect the victim and to deal effectively with the perpetrator;
  • providing education and training;
  • campaigning for improved legal measures; and
  • supporting relevant research.

Our long-term goal

is to equip a generation with the confidence to recognise coercive control and stalking, and a criminal justice system and support services that have a thorough understanding of the issues involved. We need to empower stalking victims to seek help much sooner, and to build a society that reacts in the right way when they do.

The Trust’s activities—briefly

A major focus of the Trust is to raise awareness amongst young people and their support networks of the dangers of coercive control and stalking, reaching them through both formal education and online engagement.

Our Relationship Safety Resource, a package of quality-assured teaching materials and lesson plans on stalking and coercive behaviour, has been freely available to secondary teachers throughout the UK since 2019 as part of the statutory RSE strand of PSHE education. These lessons are being delivered around England and Wales not only by PSHE teachers but also by police community support teams from at least seven different forces, and are supported by walk-through videos developed by Durham Constabulary.

Working together with St Mary’s University, Twickenham, we have developed Ofqual-registered qualifications and short courses aiming to upskill professionals working with young people so that they recognise stalking and respond appropriately. We have also been running an on-line lecture series focusing on stalking, abuse and safety for young people.

Since 2020 we have enlisted the support of a panel of youth ambassadors aged 14–25 as we work to develop effective resources for victims, family members, friends, education and youth professionals, and criminal justice professionals. We have greatly increased our social media presence and have just released a three-minute animated video to raise awareness of stalking. We have also developed a relationships badge for Girl Guides.

Since the Trust came into existence in 2017, we have taken part in numerous professional training events throughout England and Wales involving the police, CPS, judiciary, probation officers, domestic abuse case workers, and social and health services. We also provide a range of training packages, often in cooperation with other agencies and charities. In addition, we have held three annual conferences bringing together professional practitioners and academics to discuss advances in understanding stalking and best practice in tackling it.

We have established a major collaboration with Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust to develop and deliver training and resources for their healthcare staff and for Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services staff and users.

We actively support academic research relating to young people and stalking that will lead to practical benefits in the future.

We campaigned in support of the 2019 Stalking Protection Act and the introduction of Stalking Protection Orders. We continue to campaign for statutory measures to deal with serial offenders, while working in the meantime to ensure adequate perpetrator monitoring and intervention and “joining of dots” and hence the best possible risk management. By telling Alice’s story, the Trust works to ensure the victim’s voice is at the heart of all campaigning.

More about the Trust's Activities

About our logo

Our logo was designed by Paul Johnson of PJD, based in the Leicestershire village of Tur Langton, where Alice grew up.

Why the turtle? Simply because Alice loved them. They have become a symbol among her family and friends of everything we are trying to achieve in her name. The turtle on the logo was designed by Alice's cousin Reece Hills.

What's behind the strapline? A fundamental principle. Stalking has to become universally recognised for the very serious crime that it is, something that must never be allowed to continue.