An isolated house on a tree-lined road behind an abandoned airfield. A knock on the door late at night, and yet the threshold was empty. Later, the face of a man in a balaclava pressed against the window.
It sounds like something out of a horror movie, but for my mother, my brother and me, it wasn’t just a cheap movie cliché. It was real life. And the consequences have stayed with me for almost 40 years.
It was the mid-1980s and my mother and father had separated. I was a baby and my brother was four, and we lived in one of six properties spread out along a single winding road, not far from a motorway.
By day, our house was picturesque, with pink roses growing on the wall and a long garden leading into the woods. When winter came, Mom would take us for walks in the woods to gather firewood for the fire. Sometimes, my brother would ride his bike across the vast expanse of the forgotten airstrip.
There seemed to be nothing to fear there, but at night the street was very different. There were no streetlights and, apart from the faint hum of the motorway traffic, it was very quiet.
Marisa Bate with her mother, who is now 72 years old and who was a victim of harassment for three years, still does not know who her harasser was
Marisa says her mother saw a face in a ski mask pressed against the living room window, framed by the darkness of the night outside.
It was a dead end street, with no cars or sidewalks. Further into the forest, a few hundred meters away, there was a cafe for truck drivers, but it was closed at night.
And then the knocking started at the door. The first time it happened, late at night, my brother and I were asleep. Mom assumed it was a neighbor who might need help. But when she opened the door, no one was there.
A few nights later, there was another knock at the door. Mom took a deep breath and opened it. Again, there was no one there.
He walked out into the small front yard, turning on the flashlight he always kept by the door. Nothing. He didn’t hear any cars start up. He didn’t see anyone.
Then came the phone calls. When she answered, all she could hear was the sound of breathing.
She said nothing and hung up, until one day fear turned to rage: “Fuck you!” my brother remembers yelling into the receiver before slamming it down. He called the police, but they didn’t seem interested.
I have since spent long hours trying to imagine the terror she must have felt next, or rather trying not to imagine it, but without success. For one night, Mum saw a face in a balaclava pressed up against the living room window, framed by the darkness of the night outside.
She called the police immediately, but when they arrived the man had already left.
They asked her if she recognized the eyes that were looking at her, but she didn’t recognize them: they were too dark.
Shortly afterwards, my uncle, a quiet and gentle man, bravely spent a night in the garden armed with a baseball bat. The prowler remained hidden for a while, but, sure enough, he returned.
For three years, Mom’s stalker harassed us off and on. He never showed up again wearing a balaclava, but made himself known for a few months with silent phone calls and knocks on the door before briefly disappearing and then reappearing again.
The intervals were supposedly another method of intimidation, designed to keep Mom in a state of perpetual fear, wondering when she would return.
Of course he was afraid, but he didn’t show it, or at least, he never showed it in public.
She didn’t leave home. No one came to stay. Instead, she stayed in the house with her two young children. She contacted the police on several occasions, but no one was arrested or charged.
When my parents’ divorce was finally settled, almost four years later, she had to sell everything. We moved to a town and the stalker never showed up or called again.
To this day, Mom, now 72, has no idea who that was.
I was very young at the time, but the experience seemed to be etched into my subconscious. Although I have no first-hand recollection of what happened at our house in the woods, it became part of family folklore, imprinted itself on my imagination, and dictated my behavior throughout my life.
As an adult, I would go to sleep with my mouth wide open, ready to scream in case there was a man at the window. And events seemed to reinforce the idea that there were strange men lurking nearby, ready to attack.
During summer vacation, the daycare program I attended in London while Mom worked wouldn’t let us wear our name tags when we visited the park in case, they said, “someone tried to take us.”
As a teenager I lived near Walton-on-Thames in Surrey, where 13-year-old Milly Dowler was abducted and murdered in 2002. Meanwhile, our school regularly posted warnings about a blue van driving around the buildings and that no rides should be accepted.
But well into adulthood, Mom’s stalker cast a long shadow.
The Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which premiered earlier this year, highlights the issue of male victims of bullying.
Holly Willoughby was the target of stalker Gavin Plumb, who planned to kidnap, rape and murder her to fulfill his “ultimate fantasy.”
As a young girl, I knew I was more afraid of coming home late at night alone than my friends. I was more wary of men at parties or my friends’ new boyfriends, and I was always looking in the news for stories that confirmed my worst fears. On dates, I would meet them in crowded places and tell a friend in case I disappeared.
Men were a threat, and often an invisible threat. Was I being irrational or was I simply more attentive to something happening out of sight?
Working as a journalist for women’s magazines, I had access to the latest statistics and only had to look at them to know I wasn’t being totally paranoid.
One in five women in the UK will be a victim of stalking at some point in their adult life, but only one per cent of cases recorded by the police result in a conviction. The vast majority of stalking victims are women (80.4 per cent) and the majority of offenders are men (70.5 per cent).
What happened to my mother happens to thousands of women every day, including high-profile women like Holly Willoughby, Taylor Swift, Emily Maitlis and Lily Allen, who was at home with her two children when her stalker broke in.
Of course, that’s not to say it doesn’t happen to men, and recently in an interview Detective Chief Superintendent Emma Banks, head of safeguarding vulnerable people at Kent Police, said they are grateful to the Netflix show Baby Reindeer for highlighting the issue of male victims of stalking.
In 2022, I gave birth to my son and have been thinking about bullying in new ways ever since.
How did Mom cope with the exhaustion of having a toddler and a baby, plus so much fear?
I realize now, in a way I hadn’t before, that she must have been more concerned about our safety than her own. I’m more impressed than ever that he didn’t leave, but I’m also more angry than ever that he was never caught.
Why didn’t the police do more to help a single mother with two small children?
Where is he now?
Is he still alive?
Did we know him?
These are questions I’ll never have the answers to, and so it’s easy to believe he’s still out there, somewhere, watching, maybe even in plain sight.
My partner is away a lot for work. I still get a knot in my stomach when I close up the house.
I find myself expecting to see the silhouette of a figure in the garden. No wonder I’ve chosen to live in the centre of a city, surrounded by houses, streetlights and taxis passing by at all hours.
Some people might think I’m making a fuss about nothing – after all, I wasn’t the main victim. But from a very early age I knew that you could be followed or watched without your consent. That something sinister could be waiting for you. Like in a horror movie.
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