Shelagh Fogarty opens up about her stalking ordeal in new podcast

‘Strong women can be victims’: Journalist Shelagh Fogarty opens up about her terrifying three-year stalking ordeal that saw a man follow her on the tube, wait outside her house and turn up to meetings

• Shelagh Fogarty opens up about her three year stalking ordeal on Lorraine 
• The radio host talks about her terrifying ordeal on her podcast The Followers
• He used wait outside her work and follower her home on the same train 
• Eventually after years her stalker was arrested and formally charged 
• Her advice for other victims is to act faster then she did and report your stalker  

Journalist Shelagh Fogarty has opened up about her three year stalking ordeal in her new podcast The Followers. 

The LBC radio presenter, 56, joined Carol Vorderman, who was standing in for Lorraine, on the ITV show on Monday to explain the tournament she had gone through with her stalker and to offer advice to women who are going through the same thing. 

Shelagh revealed in 2015 she noticed a man that she had seen ‘a couple of times’ waiting outside the LBC studio’s, at the time she didn’t think much of it because people tend to wait outside the studio to see celebrities. 

She went on to explain she then noticed him on her Tube home two days in a row.

She said: ‘The third time I saw him on my train, it was a different train going in a different direction and I thought this isn’t right. 

‘The following week I was waiting to see if he was there again outside the building and he was.’ 

This time she decided to trick the stalker by walking towards the Underground and she then pretended to take a phone call and turned around quickly to see if he was following. 

She said: ‘I turned casually and he was right there, and he looked more shocked then me because I half expected him to be there, and he was. He darted away from me.

The LBC radio presenter, 56, explained the tournament she had gone through with her stalker and offered advice to women who are going through the same thing

Shelagh revealed in 2015 she noticed a man that she had seen ‘a couple of times’ waiting outside the LBC studio’s and on her trains 

‘I then held back from going into the tube because I wasn’t sure if he was going in there. 

‘When I did eventually go down, some ten minutes later, I stepped onto the platform and he was still there.’ 

After enduring weeks of harassment and stalking she rang her two brothers and her  sister-in-law, who are all police officers on Merseyside, for advice.

They said she should report him to the Met, which she did and she finally gave a statement.

She said: ‘For a long time I had actually minimised it, I think that was a coping strategy actually.

Journalist Shelagh Fogarty opens up about her three year stalking ordeal on ITV’s Lorraine on Monday

She joined Carol Vorderman, who was standing in for Lorraine, on the ITV show to explain how weeks of harassment and stalking affected her 

‘For too long I treated it like an inconvenience rather than a crime, because it is a crime, after the advice of my brother I contacted the Met and they immediately treated it as a crime.’

Eventually, her stalker was arrested and formally charged with stalking and given an harassment order.  

A few months had passed without Shelagh seeing her stalker and she believed the harassment order had finally put a stop to her ordeal.

Later that year he managed to track Shelagh down to a meeting that had been arranged last minute and waited for her in the nearest train station.  

It was then that she finally decided to confront him face-to-face for the first time, using the help of a nearby police officer. 

Shelagh said she decided to challenged him and said ‘you are frightening me. Do you understand? You are frightening me.’

The stalker covered his face and kept saying sorry, she then gave the officer his details and walked away.   

She said the ‘last straw’ was when she found the man waiting outside her house, which made her feel incredibly angry.

Writing for The Times she said: ‘Weeks later he appeared at my local railway station, a long way from LBC. I walked through the turnstile and practically bumped into him. 

The TV presenter said she is ‘a strong women but strong women can also be victims of stalking’ 

With one in five women experiencing stalking at some time in their lifetime, Shelagh revealed on her new podcast The Followers that ‘stalking is intrinsically linked to antiquated and harmful social norms around a woman’s place in society’

‘I called the police who said they’d go to his home. Looking at his Oyster card transactions, they found that he’d been to my station many times before. I was horrified.’

The magistrate imposed an indefinite restraining order on the him and banned him from particular locations including her home, or from approaching her online or off. 

The TV presenter said: ‘I am a strong women but strong women can also be victims of stalking, they can also suffer and can also feel pain and distress.’  

With one in five women experiencing stalking at some time in their lifetime, Shelagh revealed on her new podcast The Followers that ‘stalking in intrinsically linked to antiquated and harmful social norms around a woman’s place in society.’ 

She said: ‘Norms that have been brought to light in the news that a woman should stay inside at night, that the clothes a woman wears can make her more vulnerable to an attack and that it’s a mans right to pursue a woman and that this is just the way of the world. 

‘I just never imagined that anyone might suddenly make me the target of their obsession.’

According to the Office of National Statistics, reports of stalking and harassment shot up by over 31% as the UK’s coronavirus lockdown eased.

Shelagh’s advice to woman is to report stalking ‘as soon as possible’ don’t expect it to just go away on it’s own. 

Stalking is defined as ‘two or more incidents causing distress, fear or alarm, receiving obscene or threatening unwanted letters, emails, text messages or phone calls, having had obscene or threatening information about them placed on the internet, waiting or loitering around home or workplace, or following or watching’. 

Shelagh’s advice to woman is to report stalking ‘as soon as possible’ don’t expect it to just go away on it’s own

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