I was grateful to read the Guardian investigation revealing how perpetrators of abuse are using private investigators to further harm by proxy, exposing the unseen threat faced by victims and their supporters (You feel violated’: how stalkers outsource abuse to private investigators, 11 January).
As the manager of a sexual and domestic abuse service, I see the impact of stalking on a monthly basis, not as an adjacent concern but as one of the clearest predictors of intimate partner homicide we have. Victim-survivors who disclose stalking and associated behaviours are rarely paranoid; they are often correctly identifying imminent danger.
Extraordinary measures are taken by victim-survivors to stay safe: changing names, abandoning jobs or study, moving across the country, and fleeing into refuges or new areas to live anonymously. Yet even these steps can prove redundant if an unregulated investigator is paid to track them. In 2026, it is horrifying that those at the highest risk of serious injury and fatality, located in refuges for their safety, can be found because someone with no licence, oversight or training was willing to take a perpetrator’s money. That 64% of such investigators are former police officers, trained to protect victims of crime, reveals the problem is not primarily a lack of expertise but of accountability: people trained to safeguard victims are now able to use those same skills to assist perpetrators in evading the law.
A statutory bar on investigators taking on cases involving physical surveillance of a partner or ex-partner, and a duty to decline instructions showing the hallmarks of domestic abuse or stalking, must be implemented. Reforms must also include mandatory training in domestic abuse, stalking and harmful practices, such as forced marriage, and “honour”-based abuse as a condition of practice.
Noor Da Silva
Deputy safeguarding lead, University of Northampton
