Laws
Repeated conduct can have legal edges.
This is signposting, not legal advice. Use primary legislation, official guidance, police, legal support, or safeguarding routes when risk is live.
01Harassment can be a course of conduct, not one isolated act.
Protection from Harassment Act 1997 covers harassment and course-of-conduct offences.
02Stalking law can cover fear, serious alarm, or distress.
Section 2A covers stalking. Section 4A covers stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm or distress.
03Stalking Protection Orders can reduce risk before a full criminal outcome.
The Stalking Protection Act 2019 created civil protective orders police can apply for to reduce stalking risk.
04Updated stalking policy keeps warning that recorded crime is incomplete.
The Crime and Policing Act 2026 factsheet explains changes around Stalking Protection Orders, statutory stalking guidance, and Right to Know guidance.
05Coercive control can be quiet and still legally serious.
Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 covers controlling or coercive behaviour where statutory conditions are met.
06Domestic abuse includes emotional, psychological, economic, and coercive abuse.
The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 includes physical, sexual, threatening, controlling, coercive, economic, psychological, emotional, or other abuse.
07Abuse by proxy can involve pressure through another person.
Domestic abuse conduct can be directed at another person, including a child, family member, friend, or colleague, while targeting the victim.
08Malicious communications can create legal risk depending on facts.
Threatening, grossly offensive, indecent, obscene, or menacing messages may raise communications-offence issues depending on facts.
09Online harms guidance should be checked against current official sources.
The Online Safety Act 2023 introduced newer communications and intimate-image offences. Check current official guidance before relying on summaries.
10Children can be harmed by seeing, hearing, or experiencing domestic abuse effects.
Child safeguarding can involve Children Act duties and the recognition that children can be victims where they see, hear, or experience effects of domestic abuse.
11Adults at risk may need safeguarding routes, not only personal boundaries.
Care Act 2014 safeguarding duties apply where an adult with care and support needs is experiencing, or at risk of, abuse or neglect and cannot protect themselves because of those needs.
12Helping, encouraging, or assisting harm may create legal risk.
People who help, encourage, or assist offending may create their own legal risk. This is relevant where third parties are pulled into harassment or abuse by proxy.
13Live risk belongs with police, safeguarding, specialist support, or legal advice.
Use police, safeguarding, specialist support, or legal advice where conduct is live, escalating, or involves children or adults at risk.