Miranda*’s mothers group helped her escape abuse. Then the stalking began

For Miranda*, the birth of her son led to her lowest point and, later, her escape from her abusive husband. 

“I was having a shower and he stormed in drunk and he said, ‘if you don’t get out of the shower now, I’m gonna throw him across the couch’,” she recalled on FW’s There’s No Place Like Home podcast. “As I was getting out of the shower, he ripped the towel from me and forced me to look in the mirror and said, ‘look how disgusting you look. This is why I have to sleep with other women.’” 

Miranda had given birth to their baby boy just three days earlier.

“That was a breaking point for me,” she said. “I could have chosen this life for myself but it’s not the life that I’m going to have for my child. I’m not going to allow him to witness that.” 

Miranda met Justin* in her late teens and, after what seemed like a whirlwind romance, they were soon married. After that, he revealed his true nature. She’d thought about leaving many times, but after that confrontation in the bathroom, she knew staying was not an option. 

Then, finally, some luck. While Miranda was strategising her latest escape plan, two other women in her mothers group – both trained social workers – recognised what was being done to her. They asked her if she was safe. She told them the truth. One connected her with a counsellor who helped her understand she’d been experiencing a cycle of violence.

“That’s not sending flowers. That’s actually letting her know that he knows where she is.”

After her son was safely out of the house, Miranda sat Justin down and told him she was leaving him. She was going to stay with her mother. In a bid to placate Justin, she even told him he could keep their house in the split. He initially feigned acceptance before returning to assault her. Miranda escaped and, although Justin was arrested, he returned home as soon as he was released.

“He came straight back to the front door and then told police, ‘Oh, I was just trying to get some socks, I need some clean socks’, things like that,” said Miranda. Justin would also drive past the house constantly and loiter, leaving butted out cigarettes as an ominous reminder that he’d been there.

Miranda’s experience is far from unique. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey (PSS), one in five women and one in 15 men have been physically stalked, while just over half of the population (51 percent) has been stalked or monitored online. 

Stalking is also a significant risk factor for intimate partner homicide. Research from 2022 found that stalking was present in 25 percent of cases where a man murdered his female former partner. Professor Heather Douglas, who has done extensive research into domestic violence and stalking, says this aligns with her experience. 

“[For] the kinds of cases where I’ve been an expert witness in coronial inquests, for example, there’s often been obsessiveness by the ultimate perpetrator of the fatal violence,” said Professor Douglas. “They’ve been checking on their partner […] realising they’ve lost them and absolutely panicking about that. And the response to that, in some cases, is to destroy them for it.”

Dr Brian Sullivan is the CEO of the Red Rose Foundation, a national not-for-profit addressing the damaging impact of domestic violence. He points out that stalking is not always as overt as what Miranda describes. Sometimes it can be disguised to look like a loving gesture. The purpose, though, is to send the message that “you can’t escape from me”. 

“Men may send flowers to a secret address that they’re not supposed to know about,” said Dr Sullivan. “Someone might think that oh, gee, he’s just forlorn. He’s so upset at losing the love of his life [that he’s] sending her flowers. That’s not sending flowers. That’s actually letting her know that he knows where she is. Even though he’s not supposed to.” 

In the digital age, the nature of stalking and monitoring has also transformed. Stephen Wilson is a former detective sergeant who left the police service to co-found Protective Group, an organisation that searches victim-survivors’ homes and cars for tracking software planted by their perpetrator.

“We’re sweeping a home looking for hidden cameras, hidden microphones, sweeping a vehicle looking for hidden trackers and then checking devices like phones, computers, iPads, kids gaming consoles, kids iPads, everything that she thinks the perpetrator may have had some connectivity with,” said Wilson. 

“Generally, when someone has a suspicion there is something happening, there usually is something going wrong.” 

It’s been several years since Miranda escaped. Justin’s stalking has stopped. She’s glad she didn’t believe the lies he told her before she left. 

“You might be told that you won’t be able to survive. My abuser told me that he was going to ensure that myself and my son would not survive. You think that you’re [alone], but you’re not.”