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and 900,000 men in England and Wales are stalked every year.

It is like a slow form of murder. You put up with a large amount of abuse and stay silent. You lose your confi-dence and retreat into yourself. In some cases, it escalates: hundreds of women have died at the hands of men, many were stalked.

Now I have decided to speak publicly about my situation in a bid to make the CPS appreciate both the seri-ousness of stalking and the effect it has on peo-ple’s lives. I believe the CPS has now put me, my children and other women in danger.

The CPS has left me to continue living a life in which I have to cal-culate everything I do.

I’ve forgotten what it’s like not to have to look over my shoul-der, not to consider who might be on the end of the phone and not to be suspicious of every person I meet.

IT ALL started in 2007, around the time of my campaign to reduce the legal time limit of abortion from 24

to 20 weeks. This man began phoning my office and sending emails almost daily. He accused me of lying, called me a religious freak and was ferociously angry at my attempts to reduce the upper limit – he was desperate to stop me.

At the time I challenged him, which seemed to make him angrier.

I was then subjected to a constant flow of aggression via Twitter, blogs, emails and tele-phone calls.

From about 2008, for several years, he wrote about almost nothing but me on his blog – hundreds of words every day.

At one stage he wondered on Twitter what it would be like to shoot me through the brain and also posted a picture of himself with a terrify-ing expression holding a dummy gun.

To call him irrational is mild. He appeared obsessed with the abor-tion issue and, when the vote was over, he carried on with me.

In those days I felt intimidated, as though someone was standing behind me, watching my every move. It was quite obvious I was the focus of this man’s world, his obsession – and that was terrifying.

I had been made aware of him sev-eral years before when he focused his unwanted attention on fellow MPs, one over a period of three years. He had made her ill and her family fear for her safety, but I failed to under-stand. I so regret being like that with her because that is how the CPS has been with me.

His campaign against me ramped up in the run-up to the 2010 General Elec-tion. I was made aware of a blog post in which this man joked about parking a campervan in a field next to my home and training a webcam on my front door. At the time, I lived in a remote farmhouse with my youngest daughter, Cassie, then 15. She was vul-

September 14 • 2014 The Mail on Sunday 41FEMAIL

WHEN my daughter Jenny hadn’t con-tacted me for 22 hours recently, I panicked. Con-cerned that some-thing dreadful had

happened, I maniacally fired off a series of messages: ‘Where are you, why haven’t you been in touch, what’s going on?’

When she did make contact, Jenny gently explained that she had been celebrating a birthday and hadn’t checked her phone.

Jenny is 27. I realise I sound like a neurotic lunatic, but ever since a stalker entered our lives seven years ago, I check up on my daugh-ters three or four times a day.

Since 2007, this man, whom I cannot name for legal reasons, has made mine and my family’s lives unbearable and caused us huge embarrassment by harassing people he knows to be close to me.

His barrage of vile tweets, blog

posts and hurtful videos, combined with emails and ranting phone calls to my office, have made me realise that if I had known of this man’s existence I would never have become an MP.

Last year, I even fled my home in my Mid-Bedfordshire constitu-ency after he had moved 70 miles and rented a house down the road.

I now find it hard to sleep and to focus. I have panic attacks and find it impossible to even go to the supermarket alone.

I live in fear of how far he will go and what he might do next.

I know it’s hard for people who

think it is ‘just a bit of cyber-bully-ing’ to understand what I’m going through. But, while cyber-bullying can be devastating, I believe this man is not a cyber-bully, but a cyber-stalker who should be pros-ecuted under the relatively new stalking laws from 2012, designed to stamp out this behaviour.

Despite my local police force last year conducting a thorough inves-tigation, and passing the matter to the Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS has decided not to bring charges against him.

It is an upsetting and infuriating decision. About 1.2 million women

noticed a man who had a profes-sional-looking video camera with built-in boom set up beside him. He also had a computer. Normally, a cameraman would introduce him-self, but I remember looking over at him and he averted his gaze.

I thought little of it until the chair-woman named the man and explained he would be filming the debate for residents’ use only. On hearing his name, I felt as though someone had trickled ice-cold water down my back. It was him. At the time, this guy lived in the South of England and here he was in my con-stituency. It was the first time I’d seen him face-to-face. I look terri-fied on his video.

After an embarrassing exchange, it was decided the man could con-tinue filming.

Then an audience member became upset, as she had noticed on her phone that he was streaming it online and using #dorries. To her

credit, she spoke up about it. I reported the incident to the police, who eventually invited the man in for a ‘voluntary interview’. He was given ‘advice’ about his behaviour but was not arrested.

Before the interview, they referred to him by his surname. But after, they used his Christian name. They said he seemed like a nice bloke who had a nice house.

The police officer who interviewed me said: ‘If you’re having us on we’ll come after you.’

And then the coincidences began. One morning I went on Twitter and

clicked on an account belonging to one of his associates. I believed he had used the internet to assemble a small group of like-minded people.

She tweeted: ‘Morning Nadine.’ I shut the laptop lid and changed my passwords, but it kept happening. In February, I went skiing. A Twitter account believed to be his tweeted a link to a false skiing website just

after I had booked, and then last month he tweeted about me buying ski equipment. How did he know?

OBVIOUSLY, these things could just be coinci-dences, but Carsten Maple, a co-director at the National Centre for Cyberstalking Research at the University of Bed-

fordshire, advised me that he could be in my computer. He explained there is now a plethora of software available for watching and tracking others – both legal and illegal – and it is widely used in stalking cases.

I recently held a debate in Parlia-ment in which I mentioned Mr Maple. This man then began telephoning his female research assistant.

Last July my office received a shocking email from a constituent. It warned that this man had held a meeting to organise an attack cam-paign against me. It said, chillingly,

that this man had rented a house close to mine and had copies of my bank statements. I went home, packed a bag and fled.

Among many other things, a mem-ber of my staff handed in her notice after he began contacting people she had worked with 20 years ago. I was aware he had obtained the phone number of a BBC researcher on a programme I had appeared on and was harassing her. He was aggressively harassing charity workers I had spoken about pub-licly. I felt as if I was drowning.

I took the email from my constitu-ent to Bedfordshire Police’s Chief Constable, Colette Paul. She vowed to support me. I almost fainted with relief because, for the first time, it seemed that someone was on my side. Up to that point, I felt like an idiot, that I was troublesome and stupid. I felt that other people were looking at me through a screen he had erected. Bedfordshire Police

began a thorough investigation, and last November it was presented with a scenario that I believe could have seen this man prosecuted.

Each Sunday, I take the same walk, at the same time, in the area I am staying in since fleeing my home. On this occasion my partner Chris, who would normally have been at work, was with me. Nobody, bar my family and office, knew where I was staying, so it chilled me when I saw a man with a long lens camera on the path ahead.

When he saw me he dashed behind the church wall, the only place with a view of the house I was staying in.

Chris and I went through a gate, and to my horror I saw who I believe was my tormenter with a woman wearing a hooded mac. The man with the camera ran towards them. We carried on down the hill, but on our return I saw their outlines block-ing the path ahead. Chris wanted to take a photograph but I panicked, screamed ‘Don’t’, and scrambled under a barbed-wire fence and down a sheer bank. Now I wish I’d let him because that photo could have been a crucial bit of evidence for the CPS. As it was, I could prove nothing.

In June, officers told me the CPS would not be bringing charges. I’d been working closely with the amaz-ing Laura Richards, CEO of Paladin, the National Stalking Advocacy Service. I had both his former and still-damaged victims prepared to give evidence had the case gone to court, but still the CPS said no.

I broke down. I couldn’t believe that this man, who had subjected me to such terror for so long, could keep winning. That was a bad day for me. A vulnerable day.

But the fighter in me thinks: ‘Why should I let somebody change my life and stop me doing the job I love?’ I won’t let him beat me. I will request that my case is reviewed.

Last week a new protocol was issued on the handling of stalking offences. The CPS crowed that new legislation had brought 743 cases in England and Wales to court in the financial year 2012-14. But in Scot-land, since stalking legislation came into force in 2010, prosecutions up to last September number 1,046.

It’s not only this area in which the CPS has been incompetent. Take Operation Yewtree. In the case of Jimmy Savile it was obviously an easy decision to make, and the right one. But when it comes to Cliff Rich-ard, you think: ‘They’ve got it wrong.’ Who made the decision to investigate Cliff on the back of one spurious complaint?

In cases like mine, it is making the wrong decision completely. No woman should have to live her life the way I do.l  A CPS spokesman said: ‘We reviewed this case sent by Bedford-shire Police and concluded that there was insufficient evidence to proceed. When considering com-ments made on or within media and public forums the CPS must con-sider an individual’s right to free speech. In this case it was concluded that the blogs did not constitute a course of conduct resulting in har-assment. A charge of stalking was considered but could not be pro-ceeded with for the same reason. The CPS takes harassment and stalking offences very seriously.’

The Mail on Sunday contacted the man at the centre of the allegations. While he did not deny being the per-son in question and attending public meetings, he said his actions did not amount to stalking or harassment.

As told to Amy OliverlSee paladinservice.co.uk. Nadine Dorries’s debut novel The Four Streets will be published in paperback by Head of Zeus in October.

A horrifying account of a life lived in fear and a savage indictment of UK justice –by one of our most high-profile politicians

nerable because she was sometimes home alone when I was working.

He later dismissed it as a harmless joke, but try telling that to a teenager who, from that day, wouldn’t go into the house alone because she was too scared. It didn’t help that one night after that, we came home to find the back door off its hinges. Nothing had been taken but the drawers in my office were open. The police arrived quickly, but the culprit was never traced.

I have instructed my daughters to be vigilant. But they’re also aware that their mother has turned into this paranoid person who triple-locks the doors, won’t let anyone go out on their own and shines a torch into the car before she gets into it.

Things became truly creepy in May 2010 at a hustings in Bedfordshire. I

THREATENING: In a terrifying YouTube

video, Nadine Dorries’s stalker

brandishes a torch made from

a plastic gun and, above, one of his tweets about her

ABUSE: A YouTube video still featuring Nadine Dorries, above,as a stuffed toy, posted by the man she says is her stalker

Try to imagine how thatliar/hypocrite @IainDalewould react if Ipublished a story about myshooting @NadineDorriesMP through the brain.

This man’s stalked me for seven years

...so why can’t the police stop him?

By NAdINE dorrIES MP

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