Lily Allen, a hook on which I’ve often hung el accidente satire, being remarkably adult and empathetic in awful, terrifying circumstances, for which she deserves much respect:
Lily Allen demands answers from police over seven-year stalking ordeal (aol.co.uk).
“Lily Allen said she was made to feel like a ‘nuisance rather than a victim’ by police investigating a stalker as she revealed horrifying details of the seven-year ordeal. The singer was pursued by a man who barged into her bedroom as she and her children slept, said he wished to stab her through the face and spent nights lurking in her garden. However Allen said she was denied the support she expected when she raised her concerns with police. … The long campaign of harassment has left her ‘a changed person’, Allen said after she finally saw the man convicted. She said: ‘It was not special attention I looked for. It was reassurance and validation. The police made me feel like a nuisance, rather than a victim.’ … The nightmare began in 2009 when a Twitter follower using the handle @lilyallenRIP appeared claiming to have penned one of her hits.
“Behind the tweet was Alex Gray, a man in his early 20s from Perth, who then sent abusive rants, accusations and suicide threats in letters to her flat, her sister’s home, her record company, and her management, that were in turn handed to police. … However Allen said she felt she ‘hit a brick wall’ when she tried to raise the stalking with police…. ‘What I give a s*** about is a man who is saying he wants to put a knife through my face,’ she said. … Allen said she wanted answers from the police: ‘I’m not angry at Alex Gray. He has a mental illness. The system has failed him. But until he gets the right treatment and the right help he needs, then I’m not safe. ‘You can throw the book at him, put him in jail, but he’ll still be coming out. And the victim is never safe.’”
“The right treatment” he will, alas, never likely actually get because mental illness for society more concerned with “what you can offer” finds treatment of such suffering that does not involve detention and chemical cocktail to at least keep them docile offers little back and is best a social problem just swept under a rug while attention is directed back to those that can offer something back for it.
It could be asked if said society which judges persons worth purely by what their success can offer is, although not responsibly for celebrity stalking—which has gone on since the engenderment of the concept of “celebrity” gave it the antithesis attention, even Benjamin Franklin, Lord Byron and Charles Dickens had stalkers (listverse.com), as did the “celebrities” of even older epoch, the ancient Greek “demigods”—partly responsibly, in this era of social media, the insulting and trolling which is for many the foundation of getting their fifteen minutes on Twitter et al. with modus operandi a virtual similarly for the unwanted letters, packages, calls and jealous pursuit attention poison pen letter writers in quaint village used to have to make do with, indeed the current jealous gush of curmudgeons and termagants (female version of) keen to portray themselves as “the people you love to hate” only a seeming side-step from the erotomania (mistaken belief that another person loves them) of real stalkers.
Updated 19th April 2016
Mum of Lily Allen’s stalker tried to get help for him for 20 years (mirror.co.uk).
“Heartbroken Michelle Gray said the police, social work and health services in Scotland and England have all failed to help 31-year-old Alex, who suffers from a catalogue of mental illnesses. And she demanded to know how he was allowed to harass the 30-year-old singer despite her family’s repeated warnings and cries for help to the authorities since her son was a primary school pupil. … The 49-year-old said: ‘I have been trying to get Alex help for 20 years and at every corner I’ve been told I’m ‘paranoid’. He had psychiatrists at school saying nothing was wrong with him, I’ve tried sectioning him a couple of years ago but I’m not allowed because I live in Spain. … Gray was briefly housed in a secure unit in England in 2014 but mental health experts demanded his younger sister look after him in the community despite his increasingly erratic behaviour.”
You may ask how much it may have cost taxpayers to have kept him in a secure facility where help could be given, but you can also ask how much of said taxpayers will now spent in legal costs and I’ve a hunch the main amounting difference will be the distress Lily, and Alex and his family had to bare.
Updates/Follow Ups
20th July 2016
Indeed, it seems an added part of the stress may have been that Lily was perhaps getting it up there from new BF after splitting from Bob-builder husband Sam Cooper when the break in occured:
Lily Allen confirms new boyfriend (femalefirst.co.uk).
“The 31-year-old singer, who was rumoured to have split from husband Sam Cooper in December, spoke out after legal papers showed she was in bed with grime DJ Daniel London when a stalker burst into her flat in the middle of the night last October. In a tweet, which has now been deleted, she wrote: ‘I had hoped I could keep my relationship quiet until I introduced my boyfriend to my children.’”
Recent/related stories
- The unoriginal curmudgeon (Latest Picks 13th April 2016)
- Lily Allen drops hint marriage is over, says divorce should be taught in schools (Latest Picks 11th February 2016)
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