A woman who was relentlessly stalked and harassed by a man she only met once during a job interview has opened up about the terrifying ordeal.
Jen, a recruitment consultant from the UK, bravely shared her story in the first episode of To Catch A Stalker, the latest BBC Three documentary series hosted by former Love Island star Zara McDermott.
The programme follows Zara, 28, as she meets with victims of stalking and domestic abuse to highlight the devastating and long-lasting impact of these crimes.
Jen revealed that her nightmare began in March 2022 when she posted a job advert online. A man, who would later become her stalker, applied for the position and was offered the job following a brief interaction.
What followed was a chilling campaign of harassment and sexual text messages leaving Jen in constant fear.
She said: ‘I started to get texts from him, [saying] “morning. I’ve just started my day. It’s 5am. I’m heading here and I’m gonna be stopping there.”
‘And then it started to be pictures as if he was texting his best friend. I didn’t respond to them. And then, they started to get a little bit personal.
‘Then the texts were coming through at eight, nine, ten o’clock at night, and I was not responding to anything. But then I’d get five or six more messages. And I was waking up to loads of messages in the middle of the night.’
Jen (pictured) a recruitment consultant from the UK, appeared on BBC three’s To Catch A Stalker, revealing how she was relentlessly stalked and harassed by a man she only met once during a job interview
The man would attempt to insert himself into Jen’s daily life by repeatedly sending her his location and urging her to meet him, behaving as though they were in a relationship, despite having met only once.
His delusional fixation quickly escalated and he sent her nude pictures of himself, leaving Jen feeling trapped and constantly on edge.
He soon began sending her whispering voice messages, which deeply unnerved her and added to her growing sense of fear.
One voice note said: ‘My love for you is in my brain it’s not in my manhood. I am the guy you are looking for, you are just not recognising it. I want you so bad, really bad.’
Describing these messages, Jen said: ‘The whispering was so creepy. Like, it’s scary. It was then I knew that he was making porn searches for people that looked like me. I was scared of him attacking me.’
Just five days after his initial text to Jen, his tone shifted dramatically. He began sending her threatening voice messages, laced with fury and intimidation.
One angry voice note said: ‘A young capable guy who is in love with you and you threw me overboard, for who? Who are those people, none of them care for you.’
Jen went to the police on numerous occasions, armed with a substantial amount of evidence documenting the harassment.
The man would attempt to insert himself into Jen’s daily life by repeatedly sending her his location and urging her to meet him, behaving as though they were in a relationship, despite having met only once
The programme follows Zara McDermott (pictured) as she meets with victims of stalking and domestic abuse to highlight the devastating and long-lasting impact of these crimes
The man was arrested four times and served three short prison sentences, but each time he was released, allowing the terrifying cycle to continue.
He is currently in prison, where he has spent the last eight months, but is due for release in the next few weeks.
Jen now lives in constant fear that the moment he is released, he will come straight to find her. She said he has shown no respect for legal boundaries in the past.
‘It’s when he’s coming out, it’s really, really stressful,’ she said. ‘On one of the occasions when he came out of prison, he rang me within two hours of being released.
‘So, he came straight out of prison, went straight into a shop, bought a phone and rang me.
‘And he was like, “hi baby, it’s me.” When he’s coming out, he’s going to get in the car and he’s gonna come straight here.
‘He wants to break me. He said that in his interviews to the police. So I’m broken.
‘The only way it may end, is if it was him or me. So, it’s either me that disappears or he disappears and he’s not going anywhere.’
Jen now lives in constant fear that the moment her stalker is released, he will come straight to find her. She said he has shown no respect for legal boundaries in the past
Jen’s sister, Sam (pictured) says she lives in constant fear for her sibling’s safety. She admits she’s terrified of what could happen when the stalker is released in a few weeks
Jen’s sister, Sam, says she lives in constant fear for her sibling’s safety. She admits she’s terrified of what could happen when he’s released in a few weeks.
Sam said: ‘If he’s out and he’s free to roam, it doesn’t matter to him.
‘The restraining orders, none of it means anything, it doesn’t register. I do think that she’s in massive danger. Massive amounts of danger.’
Sam revealed that her sister is no longer eating or sleeping properly due to the constant fear she lives in.
Although her doctor has prescribed anti-anxiety medication and sleeping pills, Jen is too afraid to take them, worried she needs to stay alert in case the man shows up at her door.
Through tears, Sam said: ‘I honestly think, without intervention, he’ll kill her. He won’t let her go. If he gets her, he will never let her go.’
Jen’s story is just one of many featured in the eye-opening series, which aims to raise awareness about stalking, as well as push for greater protections and support for victims.
A ‘heartbroken’ Zara fought back tears when she heard the harrowing account of another woman’s stalking ordeal at the hands of her ex-partner.
The second episode sees Zara sit down with an anonymous woman who recounted how her ex-partner stalked her after she ended the relationship
The second episode sees Zara sit down with an anonymous woman who recounted how her ex-partner stalked her after she ended the relationship.
She recalled how at the start he was ‘very charming, caring, I didn’t even imagine there was another side to him’.
However, he would make her video call him ’24 hours a day, every day, morning until night’.
When the woman ended the relationship things took a terrifying turn.
‘The continuous harassment, being outside of my house every other day, he would cry his eyes out and make me feel bad,’ she recalled.
Zara asked: ‘Was he calling you and texting you?’
‘He would call me more than 500 times a day and I would literally chuck my phone in some corner of my house,’ the woman replied.
She appeared to get emotional as she described how ‘he made me hate myself for being in that situation’.
‘The continuous harassment, being outside of my house every other day, he would cry his eyes out and make me feel bad,’ the anonymous woman told Zara (pictured)
The woman gestured a line across her neck with her hands as she recalled what he would do outside her house, seeming to infer he was saying he would harm her.
‘He didn’t leave outside of my house for another five, six hours. I was terrified,’ she added.
Zara replied: ‘That breaks my heart, hearing that.’
The woman submitted video, calls and text messages to the police and revealed she would be giving a witness statement at court against him.
Zara asked the woman, ‘How are you feeling through this?’
‘Like I’m rubbish,’ she replied, as Zara held her hand.
The reality star looked tearful as she continued to listen to the woman and said: ‘You did not deserve any of that, you know that?’
After wrapping up filming for the stalking documentary in March, Zara admitted it had been one of her ‘most emotional’ yet, as she praised the brave women who appeared in the programme and voiced her hope that it would open up further conversations about the issue.
