GFTU BGCM 2019 Minutes

The issues portrayed in the motion are clear enough and it is interesting

talking to people such as Laura Richards from Paladin, the antidomestic

violence charity, and hearing some of the heart rending stories of domestic

violence and particularly those that emanated from stalking, which many

people just see as a nuisance. Well, it ain’t a nuisance. It is no nuisance. It is

deadly and we need to do something about it and we need to take action now

and I am sure you will be supporting the motion, because, conference, let us

make it clear, domestic violence is not some niche interest issue that is relevant

to a few campaigners. It is real, it is out there and our members (yes, you may

not hear much about it), but plenty of our members suffer it and we have got to

do all we can, and I know we will going forward, to stamp this out and to make

sure that public safety in our communities is protected and that stalking is

made a serious offence and that the perpetrators of stalking appear on the Sex

Offenders Register in future so that they can be tracked and monitored and

supervised, which is not the case at the moment.

I hope I have given a bit of substance to the motion and hope that conference

will, of course, support us. Thank you. (Applause)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Ian. Can I have a seconder for that

motion, please? Would anybody like to speak on it?

A DELEGATE MADE THE FOLLOWING CONTRIBUTION: I would like to speak in

support of the motion and second the motion. I was not planning to speak, but

something that Ian said about stalking being seen as a nuisance, my personal

experience of that is that if you receive unwanted attention quite often people

think, “Well, that’s quite nice, you’re

getting loads of flowers or loads of emails” or whatever it might be. Having

lived the experience of stalking, I did not talk about it and in fact this is the first

time that I have actually spoken in a public forum about it. It took about 300

incidents. The police report said, “How have you been living like this?” I

moved 15 times in 12 months. I had to wear a thing around my neck which

basically if I was able to press that button or hit the black box they sent two

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