Stalking

Definition of Stalking

Stalking: An intrusive (not necessarily overt) pattern of surveillance directed at a specific person that causes a reasonable person to be unnerved or afraid for her/his safety.

Some one in 12 women is stalked in her lifetime, and over 75 percent of women murdered by a husband or boyfriend were stalked by them first. Did you know that most stalking victims aren’t celebrities, and that most victims aren’t stalked by strangers, but by people they already know?



TV producer who stalked married woman and Googled her name 40,000 times is jailed

Elliot Fogel, who worked for Sky Sports News, bombarded Claire Waxman with Valentine cards, late night phone calls, messages and flowers over a seven-year period, despite being arrested and convicted of harrassing her.

He turned up outside Mrs Waxman's house one Christmas Day and jogged on the spot, lied his way into her child's nursery and even used her wedding photographs as his computer screensaver.


Mrs Waxman, a mother of two, was distraught after he twice breached a restraining order and said she had been left "like a sitting duck".

The court heard she suffered a miscarriage, sleepless nights and an eating disorder because of the harassment.

It got so unbearable that she moved home five times to get away from him and even considered emigrating.

Fogel, 34, who has already been given a suspended sentence and £3,500 compensation order, which still hasn't been paid, has now been sentenced to 16 weeks jail for a second breach of the restraining order.

Mrs Waxman first met Fogel when they studied for A-levels at Oaklands College, St Albans in the early 1990s. He had showed an interest in her then, but it wasn't until more than ten years later that he began stalking her.

In her impact statement, read at Wood Green Crown Court yesterday, Mrs Waxman criticised the criminal justice system.

She said: "Instead of preventing something terrible from happening, I feel like we have been left like sitting ducks waiting for something to happen.

"This is a man who.... has no moral compass. He has no respect for me, my family, the law and I feel not even himself and that's what makes him such a danger to society and me.

Mrs Waxman, who attended the sentencing hearing with her husband Marc, continued: "I have to worry constantly for our safety and the safety of my two small children.

"To him this is most definitely a game. He has nothing in his life and all he chooses to do is to pursue me and my family.

"The mental harm of all these years is getting too hard to bear. My life has been ruined by this man in so many ways."

Kwame Biney, prosecuting, said Fogel, who is from Isleworth, West London, had searched Mrs Waxman's address on Google Earth as well as looking into details of her husband and ex-boyfriends.

However, Darryl Cherrett, mitigating, claimed Fogel was "just an incompetent suitor" with no psychiatric problems.

He said: "There never has been and never was any suggestion by him of threatening behaviour or behaviour that could be associated with violence.

"He is the incompetent suitor. He had never intended to cause her harassment, alarm or distress.

"He's a loner, someone who is socially inadequate."

Mrs Waxman, who runs a complementary health business in Willesden Green, North London, broke down in tears during the hearing.

Judge Fraser Morrison told Fogel: "That court order came about because Mrs Waxman wanted some peace from you because you weren't able to take the hint that any relationship you wanted with her was not going to take place.

"A custodial sentence has to be passed because of the psychological effect on Mrs Waxman and the deliberate nature of that conduct."