‘It was like a horror film’: Sophie Walker on her stalking nightmare – and how the police failed her

In April 2020, Walker's home was subjected to repeated attacks that left her in fear for her life. And yet the police brought only two charges of criminal damage. She talks about her ordeal - and why the law must change

It was a warm, sunny Saturday in May 2020 but Sophie Walker was locked inside her house in north London, in the dark, with her 10-year-old daughter. She had drawn all the curtains and was sitting well away from the windows, doing jigsaws, listening to the country singer Kacey Musgraves and counting down the hours until her husband came home from work.

Walker, who was the founding leader of the Women's Equality party (WEP), had good reason to be fearful. The next morning her neighbour, whom she had asked to keep an eye on the house, would call to tell her his CCTV had captured a man hanging around outside her house at 4am. Later that day, she discovered the embers of a fire smouldering in her back garden. Near the fire was a vodka bottle with petrol in it and a big pile of wood. The word cunt' was scrawled on the path in graffiti."