The number of cases involving a stalker being found guilty of violating their restraining order has more than doubled over the past two years.
The number of convictions shot up from 400 over the last ten months of 2012 to 1,130 last year.
Frequently, it is the same perpetrators. In 2012 and 2013, some 260 people breached 1,805 restraining orders, of which just nine of them were behind 755 cases.
“Many of the girls and women who come by are people who have been exposed to violence for years by ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends,” Ditte Wenzel Pedersen, the head of LOKK, the national organisation for women’s crisis centres, told Metroxpress newspaper.
“Unfortunately, we see that many of the restraining orders are violated.”
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SF want tougher laws
It’s not unusual for a stalker to show up at the victim’s place of work or break into the victim’s home.
Socialistisk Folkeparti has proposed a new law that would allow victims in more violent cases to get a new identity, and also fit stalkers with GPS-fitted ankle monitors so police can see when they get too close, as is already the procedure in Norway.
