Harassment

If someone is making you feel distressed, humiliated, intimidated, threatened or fearful of violence, then this could be harassment.

The person or people harassing you could be someone you know, a neighbour, someone from your local community or a complete stranger.

Harassment cannot be a single incident. You must have experienced at least two incidents by the same person for it to be classed as a harassment.

Actions considered harassment may include, but are not limited to:

• unwanted phone calls
• unwanted letters
• unwanted emails
• unwanted visits
• stalking
• verbal abuse of any kind, including on social media
• threats
• damage to property
• bodily harm.

Report it to the police

If the harassment has just happened, is currently ongoing, or you're in immediate danger:

• call 999

If it's not an emergency:

• call 101, or
• report it online at www.report-it.org.uk/your_police_force

Tell us

Once you have reported it to the police, please contact us with the incident report number and the officer’s name so we can make contact with them and offer you help and support. We'll agree the next steps with you and the police.

Contact us on 0300 1234 009.

Record what's happening

If the behaviour has been ongoing, please complete our diary sheets with dates and times of the incidents and send these to us. The quickest way to do this is download the diary sheet (word document), complete them and email them to us at enquiries@midlandsrural.org.uk

If a person sends threatening/abusive/grossly offensive messages to another person via any social networking site, they could be committing an offence.

The most relevant offences are ‘harassment’ and ‘malicious communications’.

People are allowed to voice their opinions on social media, simply because you don’t agree with their opinion (particularly where it is about you personally) does not mean this is ASB, or a crime, or that the police can take action. However, there is a difference between someone being rude, argumentative or having a different point of view to yours and you receiving threats or targeted abuse.

Depending on the circumstances and the nature of the messages, you may wish to deal with this yourself by:

• ‘unfriending’, ‘blocking’ or ‘unfollowing’ the person so that you don't have any further contact with them
• reporting them to the relevant social network; they may under the right circumstances be able to simply remove the content and/or close down the person’s account.
• review your security and other settings - there's lot of advice on the National Cyber Security Centre's website

Record and report it

• If you've received any threatening/abusive/offensive messages via social media, and believe that an offence may have been committed, you should report it to the police on their non-emergency number 101.
• Take a screen shot of the messages, if it's later deleted then you will still have a record of what was said.
• Do not respond to the message, or get someone to speak to them on your behalf, it may only encourage the sender or make the situation worse.