Baby Reindeer (Netflix)

[frogwoman]

He might have successfully done that with the rapist, but he really didn't try with the stalker, and did actually bring other people into the spotlight that way.

It's pretty much impossible to have sympathy for the stalker, given what she did actually do (the thousands of emails and phone calls, which she doesn't seem to regret at all. They aren't trivial). But a major TV show really shouldn't be able to invent a sexual assault, invent a serious physical assault and add a criminal conviction and say it's "a true story." Even if we don't like the person concerned.

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

 

[krtek a houby]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

Neither did I

 

[Thora]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

I can't remember where I read it now, but I think the suggestion is that Martha grabbing his genitals didn't happen (he says she pinched his bum on occasion though) and the bit where she tried to gouge his eyes didn't happen, and of course the convictions didn't happen.

 

[kabbes]

It’s all in his witness statement. According to that, she did plenty.

 

[Thora]

What she did was awful, but it seems a crazy decision of Gadd/Netflix to fictionalise and exaggerate so much except for who the real Martha is, and then label it as a true story rather than inspired by or based on true events. I can't understand why the only detail they would change about her is her name, the story would have worked just as well if she was a skinny American.

 

[scifisam]

I didn't know the sexual assault was made up?

It was. Pinching his bum does count as sexual assault too IMO, but it's not on the same level as following him down to a canal, forcing him up against a wall and trying to wank him off against his will, which is what the show portrayed. The serious physical assault on him and his GF didn't happen at all (I was baffled why, in the show, that didn't lead to them calling the cops). Nobody's denying this. BTW - Gadd and Netflix are open about them being invented for the show.

 

[editor]

Depends what you mean by "previous". She might not have had a criminal record for stalking but she had allegedly stalked before.

So in its colloquial definition, she may well have had "previous":

MP's widow who says she was stalked by real-life Martha 'to sue' Fiona Harvey

Interesting article that:

The wife of an MP, who claims to have been the target of the real-life individual that inspired the Baby Reindeer character Martha, is considering legal action against Fiona Harvey following her interview with Piers Morgan.

Laura Wray, 62, is contemplating suing after Ms Harvey made allegations on the programme which had a viewership of 13 million that she was harassed by her.

The series subtly suggests Martha's past history of stalking. Gadd's character looks up her name online and discovers a newspaper article - created for the show - with the headline: 'Sick stalker targets barrister's deaf child'.

This barrister is Mrs Wray, an advocate in Scotland whose family - including her disabled son Frankie - was targeted during the stalking campaign.

In 2002, the situation escalated when she and her husband were accused by Ms Harvey of assaulting three year old Frankie, who was born with a rare chromosomal disorder.

Mrs Wray then obtained an interim interdict in court which stopped Ms Harvey from further harassing her.

 

[editor]

I've had relatively low level experiences of being stalked as a result of this site and it is a truly horrible experience.

Some long term urbanites may remember a character who would appear in the urban chat room telling everyone he was taking over the site from me. He would email and call me at all hours - and my girlfriend - and he created an impressively long and mainly factual Wikipedia page about me (apart from the weird stuff).

 

[Epona]

I've been stalked for no other reason than I was polite to a bloke at a bus stop once when he said hello to me, and he followed me home when I was travelling that route twice a week for three years.
No he never did any violence towards me but it doesn't make it less terrifying.

Do people think that there should be some sexual or physical assault before it's OK to call someone a stalker?

 

[frogwoman]

I've been stalked too by an ex who wouldn't let things go when I was in my late teens and it was really scary. Nothing actually ever happened but stuff he said made it quite clear that he wanted it to.

 

[editor]

The alleged stalker was interviewed on Piers Morgan.

 

[scifisam]

I've had relatively low level experiences of being stalked as a result of this site and it is a truly horrible experience.

Some long term urbanites may remember a character who would appear in the urban chat room telling everyone he was taking over the site from me. He would email and call me at all hours - and my girlfriend - and he created an impressively long and mainly factual Wikipedia page about me (apart from the weird stuff).

Yes, it's not a minor thing at all, That sort of experience is why I tried to make it clear in my own posts that what Fiona Harvey did do (and doesn't seem to deny) is serious.

It's just that I don't think adding extra offences onto it is justified on this particular occasion. The extra things added were really significant, and the TV show did say it was true. Maybe she had threatened to do those things, or other things she had said made him believe she would do them, so it's not like it came out of his pure imagination, or maybe it was due to his other experiences that he wrote the character that way. But either way she didn't actually do them, and he didn't change her identity.

Allowing Netflix to get away with it would set a precedent that someone who was, well, a stalker or another type of abuser, could do the same to a person who was innocent of anything at all. It wouldn't help any victims - quite the opposite.
.

 

[editor]

The alleged stalker was interviewed on Piers Morgan.

It gets a bit weird when she says that she had 4 or 6 different phones and six different email addresses.

 

[Thora]

I don't think anyone has doubted that she's a mentally ill stalker.

 

[Epona]

I mean I find it worrying but typical that she's been the one in the focus of finding out who she is and possibly less well disguised than the apparently famous media person who allegedly was involved in grooming, drugging, and raping Gadd.

But that doesn't mean she's a blameless victim.

I think the point about the court case is because punitive damages have already been ruled out, she'll have to demonstrate loss of earnings or financial impact of being identified in order to get a payout, and it will just be in terms of what she can prove she's lost out on financially due to the untrue parts of the allegations.