4 days ago
Fear of reprisals if stalkers warned without target's knowledge
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith.
Photo:
RNZ / Marika Khabazi
An anti-stalking advocate says a proposed new law has a worrying caveat in which stalkers can be warned by police about their behaviour, without the victim first being notified.
The
government is amending the Crime Legislation (Stalking and Harassment) Amendment Bill
to enable police to act if a person has engaged in stalking behaviour twice in two years.
Aotearoa Free From Stalking project lead Leonie Morris said this was a good move, but she was uneasy that stalkers could be warned about their behaviour, for fear of reprisals.
"One thing that we're very concerned about is that at the moment police can notify a stalker that he has been stalking and that he'll be breaking the law if he does it again.
"We're happy with that, but we don't want police to do that until they've notified the victim that that's what they're going to do and they've talked through with the victim a safety plan - because otherwise if just out of the blue he is told that she's gone to the police and the police are now saying to him, 'You need to be much more careful with your behaviour,' he could retaliate against her."
Morris said
the bill
needed changing to ensure that before police warned stalkers, they talked to the victim about how they could keep themselves safe and whether warning a stalker might be dangerous.
Another potential area for improvement involved proving whether a person had intent to deliberately stalk someone, Morris said.
"The law just asks for evidence that someone knows their behaviour is likely to cause fear or distress, but how can you tell whether somebody's lying or not?
"The law needs to make it more simple and straightforward… to prove that he was stalking against her will, his behaviour was unwelcome."
Morris said the onus should be on the stalker to prove otherwise, not the victim.
"In overseas jurisdictions, rather than just saying he knew that his behaviour would cause her fear or distress, they say he knew or ought to have known, because how do you prove what a stalker knew?"
The bill
unanimously passed its first reading in December
and had just been through a select committee process which attracted 608 written and 62 oral submissions.
The response was to strengthen the bill, including lowering the threshold to two stalking or harassment acts within 24 months rather than three within 12 months, as well as other changes - including expanding the definition of an act of stalking or harassment to include "doxxing" - the publishing of material about the person being stalked.
However, Morris said just strengthening the bill was not enough.
"There needs to be considerable police training. There needs to be a public awareness campaign so people know exactly what stalking is. We need stalkers to know what stalking is and we need victims to recognise stalking when it happens to them."
She said police training was vital.
"In recent years that we've been looking into stalking, people report to us that police don't take stalking seriously, so there needs to be a big culture change there."
She said the bill was "definitely better" than what it was, but Aotearoa Free From Stalking would continue to advocate for improvements.
A petition calling for stronger laws on stalking was presented to Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith last year.
Photo:
RNZ / Lillian Hanly
Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith said moves to strengthen laws against stalking reflected Parliament's concern that stalkers had been able to evade real consequences for too long.
Goldsmith told
Morning Report
the behaviours targeted by the bill included loitering, damage to reputation, recording, tracking or following and using technology in stalking methods.
Asked whether it was a hurdle to require evidence that a stalker knew their behaviour caused distress, Goldsmith pointed to police's ability to warn the stalker so that "they can be in no doubt about that".
"Obviously the legislation does need to have defences, because the behaviours that are listed that may amount to stalking are very broad - things like damaging reputation or loitering.
"So we don't want people to be unable to defend themselves against claims, and so that's a basic expectation."
Goldsmith said legislation was catching up with technology, and took into account modern harassment and stalking such as tracking, following or publishing recordings.
He said the ultimate aim was to reduce the number of victims of serious, violent and sexual offending.
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