Latest news with #instincts
Globe and Mail
10-07-2025
- General
- Globe and Mail
Your daily horoscope: July 10, 2025
A full moon on your birthday means you will have to deal with people whose outlook on life is pointlessly negative. If you cannot get them to cheer up then you must put some distance between you. Don't let your own smile fade for even a second. If you give your family situation some serious thought today you should be able to come up with a solution to a problem that has been bothering you in recent weeks. Be warned though: the full moon could make loved ones rather emotional. Go your own way, do your own thing and ignore those who say you are moving too fast and heading for a fall. Even if they are right you would rather end up with a few bumps and bruises than play safe and bore yourself to tears. Act on what your instincts tell you today, even if friends and family members say you are doing it wrong. You know from long experience there is a deeper part of you that knows all the answers and that is the part which is now coming through. The message of the stars is that if you play to your strengths and focus only on your number one goal you will take great strides between now and the weekend. Ignore the naysayers who claim you are being too ambitious for your own good. Don't waste your time trying to challenge someone who is clearly way above you in the power stakes. You may think you have more talent than they do, and you may be right, but now is not a good time to take them on. Your mind is working so fast at the moment that friends and colleagues will struggle to keep up with your ideas. It would be easy to get frustrated with them but pointless as well. Accept that they are human and have limits – as indeed do you! Keep telling yourself that no matter how big some of your problems may be, in the greater scheme of things they are of little importance. Today's full moon will highlight areas where you tend to be too hard on yourself. Lighten up a bit. If you keep your eyes and ears open today you will see an opportunity that other people have missed. Once you realize you can use it to your advantage you really must do so. Don't feel sorry for those who think and move too slowly. You must be on your guard today because the full moon warns that someone you work or do business with is aiming to make a profit at your expense. Don't make it easy for them by being too easygoing in your attitude towards money. There may be a dozen things you want to get done today but there is only one thing that MUST get done. The fact that you have been putting it off for weeks or even months makes it even more essential that you get on with it now! A positive attitude is a must today. The full moon could make it hard for you to see how your efforts are making much of a difference but the fact is they are and if you force yourself to believe that you will make rapid progress. If you can't seem to get your hands on what you want most from life do not despair. The current full moon is sure to place obstacles in your path but come the weekend the way ahead will be clear and your dream will be on again. Discover more about yourself at
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Yahoo
"My Alarm Bells Were Going Off": People Are Sharing Their Wildest "I F—ing Knew It" Moments That Prove You Should ALWAYS Trust Your Gut
Note: This post contains mentions of sexual assault and murder. It can be hard to ignore our gut feelings, even if the people around us don't quite believe them. And that "I knew it!" moment when we find out our instincts were right all along can be equally as disheartening as it is terrifying. Recently, redditor Unique-Landscape-202 asked the r/AskReddit community to share their own "I knew it" moments when their guts were proven right. Here are their eerie stories. 1."When my son was 14, he lost 30 pounds within a few months. I wasn't terribly concerned out of the gate because he started on the heavy side and seemed to be working for the weight loss. However, he went to Mexico for a week with his dad and came back 10 pounds lighter, and alarm bells started going off because my brother is a type 1 diabetic." "Kiddo had an awful migraine-like headache, so I decided to take him to his pediatrician to have a blood sugar run. I expressed my concerns, and the doc pooh-poohed me, spending a lot of time congratulating my son on his weight loss. She was resistant to running a blood sugar, but I insisted – sure enough, type 1 diabetes with a dangerous blood sugar of nearly 500. Sometimes, moms just know. Also, fuck that doc." —beatrix0 2."About 15 years ago, I was hired to assist with an inventory and appraisal of the wine collection of a guy who lived in the Caribbean and ran a bank there, specializing in selling long-term, high-yield CDs. I went down and spent a week doing that and spending time with him and some of his very few employees, none of whom seemed to do very much work at all. As soon as I got back, I set up Google alerts for the guy's name and Ponzi scheme." "A month later, it started going off; he'd been indicted, assets frozen, fled in his private jet, and eventually got picked up at a cheap motel in Canada. A year or so after that, I got interviewed by the FBI, mostly questions to establish who of his 'employees' I met and about his lifestyle (presumably to try to make a tax fraud case, although they ended up just getting him on Ponzi charges)." —EggCzar 3."A guy in HR at a company I used to work for always gave me the creeps from the first time I met him. There was something in his body language and his voice that just felt predatory. I dreaded any time I had to speak with him, and I made sure never to be alone with him. One day, the police showed up at the front desk quietly, asking where his office was. They fanned out through the whole building — people saw them on all the floors posted by the stairwells, elevators, and exits." "It was so strange. They brought him out in handcuffs with no audible discussion, and they were gone as quickly as they arrived. Months later, we found out from the news that he owned a few rental properties and was accused of sexually assaulting one of his tenants. He also had cameras set up in the bedrooms and bathrooms of his rentals and filmed his tenants. Apparently, the reason for the response was that he sent messages from his work computer threatening to kill the tenant he assaulted." —SnowMiser26 4."A town I lived in had a 'fast fashion' store take-up shop on the far end of the commercial district, which was too far to get any foot traffic. The displays in the windows never changed, and I never saw a single person go in or out. Every time I drove by, I said to my partner, 'That place HAS to be a front for something.' One year later, it was busted for being an illegal grow operation." —cyclejones 5."We had a couple of private Facebook groups at work for internal communications. Just asking coworkers for help on tasks, stuff like that. I came in one morning to find we were locked out of the Facebook groups. Me: 'This doesn't feel right. Something's happening.' Coworker: 'You're just being paranoid. It's just a computer glitch.' The upper management showed up mid-morning to start handing out layoff notices." —originalchaosinabox 6."When I was a kid, the day after Christmas, I would always check out the pawn shops near my grandparent's house so I could spend my Christmas money on used video games. There was one where the owner was very chatty but always gave off a creepy vibe. I couldn't quite pinpoint why, but his shop always felt uncomfortable. Eventually, it came out that he had murdered his ex-girlfriend and incinerated her in the basement of the shop. He got away with it for 15 years until his sons testified against him. I fucking knew it!" —IAmNotScottBakula 7."I was gaslit by my ex for six years, telling me I was hard of hearing. She would mumble things constantly, making me ask her to speak up. She said I was old, my hearing was going, etc., even though I never had to ask people at work in a busy office to speak up or repeat things. After six years, she fucked up, though. We live in Hawaii, and some of her college girlfriends came out to visit and stay with us." "After two days of walking and talking with her friends, one of her girlfriends finally snaps and yells, 'Why are you talking so quietly? What the hell is wrong with you? No one can hear you!! You never talked under your breath before! What the hell?' She looked at me and knew her ass was busted. So, for years and years, it was just a petty way to put one over on me, I guess. This was a 30-year-old grown-ass woman. I'll never understand it. " —ssshield 8."Recently, I was planning a sabbatical as I had been with the company for 10 years. In the lead-up to the month, I kept procrastinating on making the arrangements for one reason or another. I couldn't shake this sense of dread for some reason. I even mentioned it to my boss about a couple of weeks before in our 1:1. I told her I hadn't ever been away from work for so long. She reassured me that it would be good." "We then talked about how we'd discuss my career plans for the upcoming year next time. I can't emphasize enough that when we talked about this, it felt like it would not happen. Fast-forward a week, and I get an invite from my boss's boss. It was a Zoom meeting with our VP of engineering to lay me off." —staticjak 9."I always had a certain feeling about a former coworker in the accounting department — just a sneaking shady vibe I couldn't shake. One day, the head of HR accidentally printed a document that showed the salary and raise/bonus/profit sharing structure of every single employee on a shared printer instead of his office printer, and I found it. The shady coworker was getting paid WAY less than I expected her to be making for all the work she was legitimately doing. Despite my suspicion about her, she was actually a seemingly good employee and had worked her way up to a role with significant responsibility." "The moment I saw her pay structure, I knew she was making money off the company in other ways. There was NO WAY she was settling for that salary after being there for so many years and for the work she did. I just knew. Fast-forward a few years, and it turns out she'd been embezzling significant amounts of money from the company. She submitted false expense reports to pay for everything from groceries to gas to food delivery to vacations, and no one caught it because she was the head of the department. It all came to light when a new junior employee saw a suspicious Amazon expense and brought it to the COO. An investigation revealed tens of thousands of dollars in embezzled funds. I quit soon after the discovery, but I hear they're pressing criminal charges against her. Somehow, I just knew!" —kitteh_pants 10."My ex-wife said she was going to the park to relax. I told her to have fun, but it was out of the blue and felt odd. It might have been an invasion of privacy, but I tracked her phone. She was not at the park. I confronted her, and she came up with the most bizarre, pulled-straight-out-of-her-ass story I have ever heard in my life. I ended up seeing the texts on her phone. She was meeting up with another guy. The funny thing is she would always gaslight me in fear that I would cheat on her, but that never happened. I couldn't even watch movies with attractive women in them. I fucking knew it." —TechnicalChipz 11."Years back, I was visiting an ex at college. We went to her church, and I met the youth pastor for the first time. He was a cookie-cutter youth pastor: upbeat, only good vibes, always smiling; we've all met that guy. But something was off, and I didn't want to be around him. Just a gut feeling, ya know? I refused to go back to that church because of him. My ex and her family thought I was ridiculous. Some of our friends even said I was wrong. Fast forward a year, we had broken at this point, but I saw that he had been arrested for child solicitation with a kid at the church. Always trust your gut, people." —MammothWrongdoer1242 12."Recently, I dated this guy. Right before we broke up, he started acting odd. Distant. Less affectionate. He initially told me he was going through a lot mentally: issues with work, his car, his baby mama. He wanted to change his living situation. He was overwhelmed, but he insisted that he still absolutely adored me and that I was an absolute angel and a constant source of peace in his life. Okay. Fine. He continued pulling back. My gut was telling me something was just absolutely not right. There was something missing." "His baby mama blew him up at one point, and I overheard her say something along the lines of, 'This is a betrayal of trust.' When questioned about it, he tried saying it was just because he texted a female friend, consoling her because she lost her mom. My alarm bells were going off. Why is your baby mama upset about that? Why is that considered a betrayal of trust? There's no way this is just her 'being crazy' because this woman was perfectly fine with us dating and has been nothing but a sweetheart to me, but suddenly, she was up in arms over him doing something as innocent as consoling a friend who lost her mom. Anyway, I finally asked him if things were really okay between him and me. He tells me that he just thinks things aren't stable enough for him to have a relationship at the moment and that he doesn't have the mental energy to give me the attention I deserve. Fine. We leave it amicable and go our separate ways. I still had a feeling in my stomach. Something wasn't right. Right before he started acting weird, he told me that he had wanted to be with me for a very long time, that he thought we were perfect together, and that he loved me. If you love someone and you're that serious about them, I'd think that even if you're going through tough times, you'd lean on them or want them around, right? Less than a month later, guess what? I found out that the girl he was consoling was indeed his new girlfriend." —Queen_Lizard997 13."I was ordering illegal drugs from a lab in China to treat my cat's feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) in December of 2019. (Now legal in the US, and many more cats have been saved!) People started posting in the FIP group about how, suddenly, the labs were taking their money, nothing was being sent, all communication was blocked, etc. Then, in January 2020, labs began 'closing early for Chinese New Year.' I knew something huge was happening." "I figured it was SARS and told my husband he needed to think about ways to teach from home because the shit would hit the fan if/when it made it to the US. He never once doubted my prediction because one of my hobbies is studying past epidemics and pandemics (SARS, Ebola, Marburg, smallpox, influenza). I knew it was going to be bad, whatever it was, but I had no clue just how bad COVID-19 would be. My cat lived, so that's nice." —vengefulbeavergod 14."I always thought my dad and I looked so different than the rest of his siblings, my aunts, and uncles. We're both really pale with dark hair, versus his siblings, who are tan with light hair and no similar features. My cousin (grandpa's side) sent me a DNA test one day because she bought two, and her husband didn't use one, so she sent it to me as we were both into genealogy. I said, 'Haha, how funny would it be if we weren't related!' We aren't (we would've only been related on my grandpa's side from a previous marriage). My grandma cheated and took the secret to her grave. It turns out my dad's middle name, which is just the letter 'E,' was the first letter of her lover's name." —AmElzewhere 15."My sister and I had a big fight, and after it escalated, I told her, 'You're not borrowing my dress (that she needed to wear to a wedding). Find your own.' A day later, I went to my cupboard to get my clothes out for the next day, and my dress was gone. I said to my parents (who I still lived with at the time – she had moved out, I still lived at the family home), 'Has (sister) been over this morning?' My parents said they hadn't seen her. I thought this was weird because that dress was always on its hanger. It couldn't have just disappeared." "I called my sister and asked if she took my dress. She said that the dress was very ugly, she hadn't taken it, and didn't need it anymore since I was a 'bitch,' and she'd bought her own, which was a lot nicer. I said, 'Okie, dokie. Well, where is mine then? The exact one you wanted to borrow is missing now.' She became irate and furious that I was accusing her of stealing. We had another argument, this time about the dress missing. She was adamant that I was extremely rude in accusing her of stealing. I was angry because she had slinked into my parents' house unbeknownst to any of us and taken it. Anyway, she went to the wedding and posted a photo of her outfit, and indeed, it wasn't the dress that was missing. One week later, we sorted out our differences, and she demanded an apology for the accusations of stealing. We sorted things out, and I apologized. I went to her house after work. At this time, I was working in hospitality, so the usual routine was to come over to her to hang out, but I changed into some pants and another of her shirts to be comfortable. It was normal for me to grab something out of her closet. This time, she flew into her room and pushed me out of the way, and it dawned on me: it's my dress. Her then-boyfriend was lying in bed and said, "The gig is up; just give it to her." I pulled her out of the way and flung her cupboard doors open, and there it was: my dress. She really had snuck into the back door of my parent's house and taken it when I was right down the other end of the house, snuck out again, and went home with it. I looked back at her and said, 'I fucking knew it.'" —snagsinbread 16."I used to see the local big town/small city hockey coach on local TV. He would do interviews in a corner of the locker room surrounded by TV, radio, and newspaper reporters. Something about him I always found off to the point of creepy. Then a few years later, some of his players came forward saying he groomed them into sex acts with him, and he ended up serving (not enough) time." —tangcameo 17."One guy I knew suddenly got very rich. Post-COVID, he said he left his job and started a new business. Within a year, he bought a Mercedes and a luxury apartment. He said he was doing stock and equity dealings and forex investments. In 2023, he was doing many podcasts and interviews on TV as an emerging entrepreneur. Meanwhile, I told my friends there was no way this guy could earn that much money legally." "My friends thought I was jealous of him, but I knew something wasn't right about his rise in such a short time. Then, he bought multiple luxury cars and flats, spent millions on parties, and flexed his wealth. No one believed me. This year, he was arrested for running a Ponzi scheme. Now, he is in jail, and all his assets have been seized by authorities. Everyone in my circle was like, 'Holy fuck, you were right.'" —raisingpower 18."There was someone roughly in my PhD cohort who worked a few labs down the hall from me. They always seemed to get positive results with no protocol troubleshooting, and the results were always the sort of thing that journal editors looked fondly upon. Somehow, this person was twice as productive as even the super smart, 60-plus hour week working, creative grad students in other labs. This person won pretty much every graduate and postdoc award you could get and ended up a professor at a well-regarded university with a huge startup grant." "A year into their faculty position, their former postdoc lab, upon being unable to repeat any experiments or build on the data, figured out that the person had fabricated or fudged at least 60% of results that had been published in top-tier journals. We're talking outright fabrication, not just a slightly too contrast-enhanced micrograph or blot. They reported this to the funding agencies, and there was a full investigation. They lost their grants, and the university fired them. It turns out a similar thing happened when I talked to someone in the person's PhD lab. Some really questionable Western blots had been overly processed and cropped in ways that were definitely misleading. At least one Master's student burned a year trying to build on that work and got nowhere. It turns out that one of the golden children of my PhD program and someone who was featured by funding agencies as the next big thing had built their scientific career mostly on lies, and it took 10 years for anyone to really catch on. There are some really great scientists who just happen to land on fruitful projects, but no one is that productive and lucky all the time." —spicypeener1 Did you ever have a bad gut feeling about something and ended up being right? Tell us about it in the comments or fill out this anonymous form. Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity. If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE, which routes the caller to their nearest sexual assault service provider. You can also search for your local center here. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger as a result of domestic violence, call 911. For anonymous, confidential help, you can call the 24/7 National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 (SAFE) or chat with an advocate via the website.
The Guardian
27-05-2025
- The Guardian
‘Every time I took a shower I thought, ‘Is he watching me?' – the terrifying rise of secret cameras
The first time Heidi Marney took a bath in her new, temporary home, she felt she was being watched. 'I had this overwhelming sense that there were eyes on me,' she says. She remembers scanning the room. 'It was a big, double bath and above, on the wall, there was a TV with a device hanging down with a flashing red light.' Marney sent a photo of it to a friend who assured her that it was a dongle and said he had one too so that he could get Sky in every room. 'Logic told me that, if someone was filming me, there'd be a camera in my bedroom,' Marney continues, 'so I went to my room and looked everywhere – the wardrobe, the lights; I was meticulous. There was nothing, so I told myself I was being ridiculous. My landlord was the kindest human you could ever meet. He would never do that.' She pauses for a second then sighs. 'I'll never ever ignore my instincts again.' This happened in December 2019, when Marney had moved into Robert Holden's rural home, a former farmhouse in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire. Marney had known Holden for a decade – he was her half-sister's uncle, so she had long viewed him as a family member. Holden was also well known in the area, a councillor who had won awards for his services to the community. 'He coordinated flood relief, he fed elderly people on Christmas Day, he mowed little old ladies' lawns,' says Marney. And now that she was at a low point, temporarily homeless after leaving a difficult relationship, Holden had offered Marney and her 16-month-old daughter a room in his spacious house while she got back on her feet. (It was something he had done many times for many others, taking vulnerable people into his home.) Aside from that first, fleeting discomfort, the arrangement seemed to proceed well. 'He'd make me a cup of tea of an evening and I opened up to him about my struggles,' says Marney. 'He was intelligent and compassionate. I couldn't praise him enough.' She stayed for 11 months and towards the end, as Marney began to think about moving on and dating again, she felt Holden's behaviour change. 'He didn't like it. He was acting like a weird, jealous boyfriend,' she says. When she discovered that he was tracking her through the Find My app, she called her aunt, a police officer, who advised Marney to check the home for cameras. 'I sent her a video of the bathroom and she screen-shotted a sensor attached to the wall and asked: 'What on earth is that? Why is there a sensor in the bathroom?'' Marney took a kitchen knife and, balancing on a stool and two paint pots, reached up and prised the sensor apart. Inside, she saw the words 'camera' and 'microphone'. 'I just completely and utterly froze,' says Marney. 'It was like holding your breath. What on earth happens now?' When she Googled the device's serial number, she saw that the 'sensor' was a camera, specially designed to avoid alerting the subject that they were being filmed. It had gone out of production two years previously, so had clearly been there a while. In fact, it later emerged that Holden had been filming women through hidden cameras for almost 15 years, creating an extensive digital library neatly organised under their names. Last September, he was jailed for six years and two months. Holden's voyeurism conviction is one of the few to make national headlines – but local news reports offer an alarming insight into the possible scale of this behaviour. Just this month, a doctor was jailed for filming guests at his Glasgow Airbnb for more than three years, through cameras in bedrooms and bathrooms disguised as air fresheners (one pointed at the loo, the other at the shower) and a smoke alarm. Other UK cases include photographer David Glover, who filmed more than 100 women using covert cameras in his studio changing rooms; Adam Devaney, who used a camera disguised as a pen to film colleagues in the toilet of his North Yorkshire workplace, and Adam Dennis and Robert Morgan, who used hidden cameras to film more than 5,000 people in swimming pool changing rooms and toilets in London and Surrey, then shared and traded the images online. January to December of last year saw a 24% rise in reported cases of voyeurism and exhibitionism (crime statistics unhelpfully combine the two) in the UK. This is partly why the government is attempting to tighten legislation around hidden cameras, which are easily available in specialist spy stores, as well as on sites such as Amazon and eBay, and often made to look like clocks, adapters, photo frames, humidifiers, even disposable coffee cups. At present, UK law defines voyeurism as nonconsensually observing or recording someone during a private activity for sexual gratification or to cause distress. Under proposals in the Crime and Policing bill, it would become a criminal offence to install equipment intended to take intimate images without someone's consent. Motive wouldn't be a factor – and even if no images were taken, installing a camera for this purpose would become a crime. For Marney though, this isn't nearly enough. 'How are those cameras even legal?' she asks. 'The potential for abuse is so huge and obvious. It's far more common than people would think.' Dr Vicky Lister, a research fellow in the School of Psychology at the University of Kent, confirms that the cases we hear about represent the tip of an iceberg. Many that come to light have gone undetected for years – and few result in prosecution. In 2020, out of more than 10,000 reported cases, fewer than 600 reached court. As part of her PhD, Lister interviewed men in UK prisons for voyeurism offences (there are no women serving time for this crime). Many had used covert cameras, including one disguised as a shampoo bottle in a public shower. 'It's scary, isn't it?' she says. 'As soon as you start digging, you start to realise. The men I interviewed were saying: 'Everyone's probably been a victim at some point.'' Research on prevalence of voyeuristic behaviour is patchy. 'A population study in Sweden suggests a lifetime prevalence of voyeurism of 11.5%,' says Lister, 'but smaller non-population studies across lots of different countries, including the UK, generally estimate higher Even [such estimates] are likely to be an underrepresentation, as there'll be people who won't admit it to a researcher.' There's every reason to believe that the technology now available to facilitate this will lead more to do it. One study in Canada found that 79% of participants would engage in voyeuristic behaviours if there was assurance they would not be caught. Lister is hoping that her next research focus will be voyeurism as a 'gateway crime'. Does it lead to physical sexual assault? Some studies of rapists and sexual murderers have revealed a history of voyeurism – up to 45% – but that doesn't necessarily mean one has caused the other. 'We do know that voyeurism is addictive and compulsive,' says Lister, 'so people who've done it once will generally keep doing it until they're caught. Unfortunately, there's a stark lack of literature on this whole topic. I think it's because it's 'noncontact' and seen as a victimless crime – until you're the victim.' For Fiona*, learning that someone filmed her while she was in her bedroom, having sex with her girlfriend, has had a lasting impact. In December 2023, she was contacted by police in Aberdeen who informed her that they had uncovered indecent images of her, taken by an electrician, James Denholm. He had used hidden cameras to film women (some of them his customers) in their bedrooms, bathrooms and pub toilets for over a decade. 'By the time it came to light, I hadn't lived in the flat where the images were taken for five years and I wasn't dating the same person any more,' she says. 'It was so long ago and I have absolutely no idea if he did some work for us or where the cameras were or how it happened. I know that he lived a five-minute walk from our house. 'It's so grotesque and inhuman,' she continues. 'It makes me feel so angry, so embarrassed and mortified and so, so exposed. It has really made me distrust men I don't know. I'd feel very uncomfortable letting anyone come and carry out work inside my home. I'd need to watch them constantly. My blinds are closed 100% of the time. I never open them now.' Fiona also checks for cameras in public toilets. 'I avoid using them if I can but if I am in one, I will check everywhere – plug sockets, mirrors, cracks in tiles. It has made me so paranoid and anxious.' Marney experienced similar emotions. 'Knowing that he had been watching me felt awful – I felt shameful, I felt disgusting,' she says. 'I remember staying at my new partner's after this had all happened and taking a shower,' she says. 'He had all these fancy water gadgets on the ceiling. My brain was saying, 'Are they cameras? Is he watching me?' I just fell to the floor, crying my eyes out.' Although UK laws around voyeurism – and the proposed changes to the Crime and Policing bill – focus on the taking of intimate images, this doesn't cover all the harms caused by hidden cameras. They can also be weapons of control. Emma Pickering, the head of technology-facilitated abuse and economic empowerment at the domestic abuse charity Refuge, says that many women they support have been spied on by current or former partners. 'Most cases we see involve hidden devices – listening, tracking, filming or sometimes all three,' she says. 'It's really difficult to help someone conduct sweeps of their home as [cameras] are designed to blend into a domestic setting. They look like everyday items. We'll be asking if all the plug adapters work and if the remote control is really connected to the TV.' One survivor uncovered 80 spycams in her home. An abusive partner can use the footage in various ways, says Pickering. 'In one case, he was gathering intimate images and putting them online, profiting financially. Others use it to monitor everything someone is doing, who they are seeing, how they're spending their time. With that information, they can gaslight and control and stay one step ahead.' This is what happened to Linda*, who was in an eight-year relationship with an abusive man. 'At first, he was charming and attentive but the control started subtly,' she says. 'First, he convinced me to delete my social media because it was 'bad for my mental health'. Eventually, I stopped going out with my friends as it caused so many arguments, it was easier not to.' Isolated, home alone, she would sit down to watch TV and have a cup of tea and he would text to ask, 'Enjoying your cup of tea?' If she went to answer the doorbell, he would message, 'Who was at the door?' 'I was so confused,' says Linda. 'It was like living in a television show – like it wasn't actually my life. I tried sitting down at different times in case he was just guessing my routine but he always knew. He seemed to know my every move.' Linda uncovered the two tiny wireless cameras by accident while deep-cleaning. One was on the mantelpiece, the other in a light fitting. 'I just felt sick and disbelief,' she says. 'Why? In our home?' When she confronted her partner, he insisted that they weren't cameras, then they quickly disappeared. 'A couple of months later, I found them hidden in a different place,' she says. Although Linda escaped the relationship when it escalated into physical abuse, her former partner continued to stalk her, threaten her online and drive past her place of work. He also left some of her clothes on her doorstep – since Linda had escaped in a hurry – and it was only later that she found the same tiny camera sewn into the lining of her returned coat. It's very hard to secure convictions for these cases. 'There are usually no consequences for the perpetrators,' says Pickering. 'Someone can claim that the cameras were in the house as a security measure, and that their partner consented to them being there. The threshold to removing evidence stored on a perpetrator's phone or hard drive is very high and there's also a huge backlog. Even when [material] is seized by police, there has usually been plenty of time to remove any incriminating evidence.' Attempts by Refuge to engage with manufacturers and suppliers of surveillance technology have not enjoyed much success. 'It's completely lawless,' says Pickering. 'We need to be looking at why these things are available when they are causing so much harm.' Linda agrees. 'They are marketed as harmless gadgets, but in reality they're used by stalkers and abusers,' she says. 'There's no regulation, no safeguarding. Why do they need to be hidden? Why can anyone buy them? I don't ever feel safe now. I'm hypervigilant, it's with me the whole time. The government should listen to women like us. It's not that we're paranoid – it's just that we know what's possible.' * Fiona and Linda's names have been changed. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women's Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Other international helplines may be found via In the UK, the National Stalking Helpline is on 0808 802 0300 or email via its inquiry form. In the US, resources are available at
