Minister aims to put stalking and strangulation offences into law

Wednesday 28 February 2024

Stalking and non-fatal strangulation could become enshrined as specific offences in Jersey law after the Home Affairs Minister has publicly supported recommendations from a gender-based violence report for the first time.

Legislation around online abuse and sexual harassment in public spaces could also be strengthened, Deputy Mary Le Hegarat has said.

Prompted by a written question from Deputy Louise Doublet, Deputy Le Hegarat has set out her response to several recommendations put forward by the Violence Against Women and Girls Taskforce who published their damning report last November.

Among its 77 recommendations to Government and other agencies, the taskforce of 20 experts called for an independent review of Jersey's criminal justice system in relation to domestic abuse, rape, and serious sexual assault – and a similar review of the family court system.

Pictured: Former police officer Deputy Mary Le Hegarat became Home Affairs Minister last month following the vote of no confidence.

The police immediately accepted the recommendations relevant to policing – but, then Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles was not able to respond before last month’s no-confidence motion ousted her from Government.

Former police officer Deputy Le Hegarat has now confirmed that she supports and will prioritise at least seven of the recommendations around strengthening Jersey’s legislation regarding gender-based violence and improving data collection.

These include:

• The Jersey government should pursue ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence 2013 (the Istanbul Convention)
• The development of a stalking offence
• Introducing emergency barring orders into the Domestic Abuse (Jersey) Law 2022
• Introducing non-fatal strangulation as an offence
• Strengthening our legislation around online and technology-facilitated abuse 
• Strengthening legislation to combat sexual harassment in public spaces
• The development of a centralised dataset on violence against women and girls

Deputy Le Hegarat said that she will also publish a response setting out her position on the recommendations in March 2024 and that she was "still considering the some of the report’s detailed recommendations".

The taskforce's report revealed that 95% of general public survey respondents said that unwanted attention, such as stalking, should be a crime.

The taskforce was also advised that the Disorderly Conduct and Harassment (Jersey) Law 2008 is intended to criminalise stalking, however stalking is not a named offence in Jersey which they deemed represented a "significant gap in the current legislation".

Unlike Jersey, the UK put in place specific legislation in relation to stalking after it was recognised that many victims felt that they were not taken seriously by the criminal justice system and that stalking needed to be named as a specific offence.

Nearly 200 reports of stalking were made to Jersey police between 2016 and 2021, resulting in two convictions.