Alice Liana Galli reports:
A woman stalked by a radiographer after he stole her NHS files has spoken for the first time about the impact of his actions on her life and how she moved home.
Waiving her anonymity, Vivien Hamilton spoke to The Ferret because she wants to help other women who may be in a similar situation.
In May 2018, Hamilton visited A&E at Crosshouse Hospital, Kilmarnock, following an accident while moving boxes into her new flat in the town. She’d hurt her ankle and was sent to the radiology unit. It was a serious sprain, but nothing was broken.
Read more on The Ferret.
In this cae, her stalker, later identified as Andrew Stewart, pleaded guilty in December 2019 “on charges of stalking and illegally obtaining the personal data of 32 women.”
During the case Stewart claimed his actions were not sexually motivated but were the results of loneliness and alcohol.
He pleaded guilty to a further 16 charges of acting in a threatening and abusive manner to other women he had been contacting between 2013 and 2018. Stewart avoided jail in August 2020 and is now on the sex offenders register while doing unpaid work.
How can victims feel safe when their stalkers are not in jail and when the stalker knows where they live?
As Protenus and this blogger have both emphasized for years, insider breaches have the potential to cause significant harm to patients. The numbers are often nothing like we see with hacks or attempts to steal personal information for fraudulent purposes, but the impact can be huge and leave victims with long-lasting psychological issues.