After briefly dating a man in 2015, Di McDonald ended the relationship. Then he started arriving uninvited and unannounced at her house.

“I would ask them to leave me alone, (then) they would come to my workplace,” she told ABC Radio National. Life matters.

For three years, the man stalked Ms. McDonald, and was eventually charged and jailed. But it took five years of police involvement, interventions and court cases to get there.

Ms McDonald says she was often left without support to navigate complex legal systems. She felt uninformed and alone.

But she is far from alone. Mrs. McDonald is among one in five Australian women and one in 15 men are affected by stalking at some point in their lives.

So what is being done about tracking in Australia and is it enough?

What is stalking behavior?

Swinburne University Professor Troy McEwan is a forensic psychologist and clinician who has worked with stalking offenders to change their behaviour. Eighty percent of these perpetrators are men.

She says stalking is a pattern of behavior that occurs over time.

“Basically, a person pushes themselves into the victim’s life where they have no legitimate right to be… They make the target or victim feel distressed, obviously, and often very scared as well.”

The behavior can include online stalking, texting and phone calls, following someone or lingering near their home, hacking their online account, or making “harassment complaints” about someone to the police or other agencies.

“Most stalking (victims) report is a combination of online and offline behaviour,” says Professor McEwan.

And both are equally harmful.

Why do people lurk?

In a minority of cases, stalking is driven by symptoms of mental illness, says Professor McEwan.

“The person needs significant mental health treatment to manage these symptoms and the stalking will stop.”

In most cases of stalking, a combination of factors drives the behavior, although there is often one in common.

“Usually a key factor is … intense, leading to emotional states and a way of thinking that maintains and sustains the emotion,” says Professor McEwan.

“Basically, the person is so caught up in their own internal experience that they either lose sight of or don’t care about the other person’s experience.”

She says some stalkers are “deliberately trying” to scare their victim, while a “significant group” engage in the behavior because they are “so caught up in their own heads”.

“In the people I’ve worked with over 20 years in this field, it’s a real mix. And you can have both.

“You can have somebody who sometimes is really intentional about it, and (other times) really isn’t, and really wants not to, but it feels almost forced (and) they don’t have the ability to manage that emotion without reaching out victim.”

Professor McEwan says helping people change their own stalking behavior is an important part of solving the problem – and Australia is no exception.

“So there’s no way to get people into a situation where you can actually provide the kind of intervention that can help them stop,” she says.

Inadequate support for victims of stalking

Services for victims of stalking are also insufficient, Ms McDonald says. She didn’t know where to turn when she was being followed.

“I didn’t have any help because I wasn’t in a domestic relationship with (the man), so a lot of the services weren’t available to me.

“I was looking (online) for help and was taken to overseas websites. There was nothing here in Australia.”

Her experience motivated her to set up an organization called Stalking Awareness Day Australia and work with MPs to address the service gap.

Professor McEwan agrees that it is a major problem.

She notes that the UK has a dedicated helpline for victims of stalking, which offers advice and resources to those targeted by the behaviour.

“Stalking is different from relationship abuse. Half of the stalking doesn’t involve an intimate relationship, and for those who are stalked by an ex-partner, they often can’t access intimate partner abuse services because of (demands for services). ).

“So to have a specific helpline (that identifies) ‘This is stalking, and here’s some information and some help’ would be such a massive, massive thing to have in this country, just to give victims a place where they can go for support. .

“Because being isolated and not knowing (what to do) and feeling alone is half the damage of stalking.”

“I won’t stop chasing by changing the laws”

Criminal defense lawyer Jarrod Behan says the Victorian Law Reform Commission has identified changes in its 2022 stalking report that are needed to better address stalking in that state, including improved government funding, education, support and training.

“It (includes) support around our mental health system and (and) support in terms of additional access to justice for applicants on Personal Safety Intervention Order issues,” Mr Behan says.

He says the Victorian Government has signaled it will implement changes in 2025, including reforms to how police respond to stalking issues and to create a supported pathway through the justice system for victims.

Professor McEwan says the proposed changes are cause for hope. She sees them as positive steps in the right direction and hopes other states and territories take note and consider adopting similar changes.

But she says additional steps are still needed.

“If we’re going to reduce the prevalence of stalking in Australia, (we need) national stalking awareness campaigns that are … adopted and talked about by the government,” she says.

“(We need) proper systems in the courts to effectively respond and support victims of stalking through that judicial process.”

And she says the government needs to provide “adequate funding for both victim and perpetrator support services, because you’re not going to stop stalking by changing the laws”.

“You will stop stalking by actually working with people who are doing it and helping them stop their behavior.”