Victim Impact Statement Example for Stalking

This is a fictional example of a victim impact statement written after two years of being stalked. It follows the ten sections used in the Justice Draft guided victim impact statement template.

In this example, Sarah was stalked by her former partner after she ended their relationship. He has been charged with stalking and with breaching a protection order.

Stalking is a criminal offence in every Australian state and territory. Protection orders go by different names depending on where you live, such as an AVO, intervention order, family violence restraining order or protection order.

Stalking is often minimised one incident at a time, because each moment can sound small on its own. A victim impact statement is one of the few places where the whole pattern can be laid out and felt as it was lived.

If you are being stalked now, contact Police. If the person is a current or former partner, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available any time. And if reading this feels heavy, go gently. You can come back later.

Victim Impact Statement of Sarah Boyd

This is a fictional example created by Justice Draft. All names, people and events are invented.

How I felt at the time

There is no single day I can point to. This happened every day for two years. When I ended our relationship, the messages started. Some days there were fifty of them, from numbers that kept changing. Then his car began appearing at the end of my street at night. He turned up at my gym, at my sister's house, in the visitor car park at the hospital where I work. One morning I came off a night shift at seven and found a coffee sitting on my windscreen. It was still warm. He knew my roster, and he wanted me to know he had been standing next to my car minutes earlier. It was not one big thing. It was the constant message that he was always closer than I thought.

Emotional wellbeing

I have spent two years scanning. Car parks, rear view mirrors, the faces in a crowd. My psychologist calls it hypervigilance. I call it exhausting. For a long time I sounded paranoid, even to myself, because each incident sounded small when I said it out loud. He sent flowers. He was parked nearby. He happened to be at my gym. Saying the words never captured the dread of living inside the pattern. I jump when my phone rings. I have panic attacks in car parks. Even now that he has been charged, I cannot relax. Relief does not feel safe yet.

Relationships

My friends were wonderful at the start, and then the stalking outlasted their energy, which I understand. I stopped telling people what was happening because I was tired of watching them not know what to say. He contacted some of my friends and told them lies about me, and a few believed him for a while. That cost me friendships I still grieve. My sister checks over my social media before I post anything. I tried to date last year and cancelled a second date because I saw his car near the cafe. The man I cancelled on never knew why. That is what this has done. It sits inside every relationship I have.

Physical health

I have not slept properly in two years. I wake at the sound of every car door in my street. I grind my teeth and I get migraines most weeks. I am a nurse, and my own GP has told me I am more run down than most of the patients I look after. The constant flood of adrenaline has left me exhausted in a way that sleep does not fix.

Financial impact

I have paid for security cameras, new locks, a dashcam and two changes of phone number. I moved house once, which cost me thousands in bond, removalists and higher rent, and he found my new address within a month. I gave up most of my night shifts because I could not face the dark car park, and losing those penalty rates has cut my income by around three hundred dollars a fortnight. There have been legal costs for the protection order and psychologist gap fees every month for two years.

Daily life and routine

I check the back seat of my car every time I get in. I vary my route to work. I photograph his car when I see it, because documenting has become my job. I keep a log of every incident, and it has more than three hundred and forty entries. I do not post anything online until days after it happens. I ask hospital security to walk me out after evening shifts. I close my curtains before dark. None of this is dramatic any more. It is just how I live, and that is the part that frightens me most.

Sense of safety

He never tried to hide. That is what people misunderstand about stalking. He wanted me to see him, because the fear was the point. There is no place I feel safe. Not home, because he watched it. Not work, because he came there. A court ordered him to stay away from me, and he breached that order within a fortnight, and then three more times. The order mattered, because the breaches are why we are finally in this court, but a piece of paper did not stop him. Nothing I did stopped him. That is what I live with. The knowledge that my safety was never in my hands.

Spiritual and cultural wellbeing

Before all this, the ocean was my church. I swam at the same beach most mornings after night shift, and it kept me steady through the hardest parts of nursing. I stopped going, because a beach is open and I never knew who was watching. Losing that took something from my spirit that is hard to put into words. This summer I started swimming again at a different beach, with my sister beside me. It is not the same. But it is a beginning.

Who I was before this happened

I was independent. I lived alone and loved it. I walked to my car after night shift without a second thought. I did not know that was a luxury until it was gone. I was spontaneous and I trusted easily, probably too easily. I was the calm one in a crisis, which is why I became a nurse. I am still calm for my patients. I have just forgotten how to be calm for myself.

What I want the court or assessor to know

Please do not weigh what he did one incident at a time. A message, a gift, a parked car. Each one sounds small, and he knew it, and he used that. Weigh them together, the way I had to live them. Two years. More than three hundred and forty logged incidents. Four breaches of a court order.

He was asked to stop by me, told to stop by police, and ordered to stop by a court. He kept going every time. Whatever he says in this courtroom, his actions have already shown what his promises are worth.

I am not asking the court to make me feel safe. I am not sure anyone can promise me that any more. I am asking the court to treat this as the deliberate campaign it was, to order that he never contact or approach me again, and to make the consequences of breaching that order real. He finally needs a reason to stop. I have given him two years of mine. I want the rest of my life back.