The Alice Ruggles Trust is delighted that the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee has backed the introduction of a stalkers’ register as part of its recommendations on domestic abuse and violence against women and girls.

The register would ensure that stalkers and perpetrators of domestic abuse were tracked and monitored so as to help prevent them reoffending with different partners, who could be forewarned by police. If such a register had been in place in the autumn of 2016, it is likely that Northumbria Police would have reacted very differently when Alice rang them, and certainly possible that she might still be alive today.

We now hope to see the stalkers’ register introduced as soon as possible. It WILL save lives.

The Select Committee also stresses the importance of awareness raising among the public, and particularly young people, and of training programmes for relevant public-sector professionals.

Two paragraphs from the Select Committee’s recommendations:

4. … We recommend that a national register of serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators, as recommended by Paladin, is introduced as a matter of urgency and that individuals placed on the register should, like registered sex offenders, be managed through multi-agency public protection arrangements (MAPPA). We believe that a more integrated VAWG and domestic abuse strategy would support a better statutory response to stalking, and a more joined-up approach to supporting victims and managing the behaviour of perpetrators.

8. We strongly support the introduction of further measures to prevent domestic abuse, to improve the identification and response to domestic abuse by organisations and to educate young people about healthy relationships. More training, central guidance and national oversight is required to ensure that public sector staff dealing with members of the public can identify signs of domestic abuse, respond appropriately and know how to help victims of domestic abuse access whatever specialist support they may need.

See earlier posts for more information on our support of Paladin’s campaign to establish a serial perpetrator register and Broadly’s UnFollowMe campaign, which featured a video about Alice which has been seen by more than a million young people.