TV presenter Louise Minchin has said she was in a ‘high state of alert all the time’ during her stalking ordeal, while her teenage daughter Mia said she was left ‘terrified’ and ‘in floods of tears’ as she speaks about it for the first time.
Ex-soldier Carl Davies, 44, was sentenced to two years and eight months in December last year after posting multiple ‘intimidating’ messages ‘intended to maximise fear and distress’ to the broadcaster and her daughter’s social media accounts over four days between July 14 and 17 2020.
The I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! 2021 contestant, who left BBC Breakfast in September last year after 20 years, told ITV’s current affairs show Tonight that the experience terrified her.
She revealed: ‘It was very clear from the messages that this person knew exactly where we lived and had stood outside our front door.
‘To say I was frightened just doesn’t really touch the surface.
‘You are kind of on this high state of alert all the time. You don’t know who they are so you don’t know that that person standing next to you isn’t them.’
Speaking for the first time about the ordeal, Mia recalled: ‘I’m logged into mum’s Instagram account and suddenly loads of messages started coming.
‘They were all kind of just really offensive, calling us not very nice names and then they got much more graphic. It was the kind of actions that he wanted to do against me and mum which got really personal and they weren’t nice to read at all.
‘I was kind of terrified… shaking. I think my heart was beating really fast. I didn’t sleep all night. The entirety of the next day I was in floods of tears.’
She added the experience has had a lasting effect, saying: ‘When I’m walking, I’m very conscious of who is behind me, especially not to have my headphones in if it’s dark and there’s no one else around.’
Mold Crown Court heard Davies’ threatening messages, one of which also included their home address, the village they lived in and the cars that were in their driveway at the time.
Commenting on one of Louise’s photos, he said: ‘You can see your garden from there’, showing he was aware of where they lived, the court heard.
Davies, of Flint, North Wales, was handed a prison sentence of two years and eight months and an indefinite restraining order.
He had previously been convicted in 2017 of stalking another woman and for biting his father on the arm in 2019, the court heard.
The programme also investigates the thousands of victims of stalking in the UK, as Louise asks if enough is being done to tackle the crime.
In 2020, Stalking Protection Orders were introduced allowing police forces to ban offenders from making contact with victims or coming within a certain distance of them.
Ahead of broadcast, ITV Tonight sent a Freedom of Information request to all 43 police forces across England and Wales, to which 21 police forces responded, revealing that out of the 70,385 stalking offences recorded last year (2021), only 237 Stalking Protection Orders or Interim Orders were issued.
The Home Office told ITV Tonight rather than bringing in a national register they’re improving current systems ‘to better identify the risk perpetrators pose, and enabling more effective data sharing between the police and other frontline agencies’.
On Stalking Protection Orders they said: ‘Expect all police forces to make full use of them and the Safeguarding Minister has written to Chief Constables whose forces haven’t applied for many of them to make that clear.’
ITV Tonight – Louise Minchin: The Truth About Stalking is on ITV on Thursday at 8:30pm.
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