I was stalked by a stranger online – he used my pics to advertise explicit content & accused my pals, it ruined my life
When a man dubbed Britain’s worst cyberstalker targeted former model Kirsten Dugdale, 31, her world fell apart.
Today, the single mum from Essex opens up about her nightmare ordeal.
HEARING the familiar “ping” notification, I reached for my phone to see a weird message from a stranger.
“Liv” wrote: “I’ve got something to tell you, followed seconds later by: “You’re with Joe*, aren’t you? It’s about him.”
It was February 2019 and the Instagram messages were the beginning of an online campaign of terror that would see me lose friends, my job and even fear for my sanity.
I didn’t know it at the time, but I was just one of serial cyberstalker Matthew Hardy’s many victims.
READ MORE ON CYBERSTALKERS
Some of Hardy’s crimes and how he was finally tracked down became the focus of the hit Netflix documentary, Can I Tell You A Secret?.
The day that first message arrived, I had been dating my partner Joe, 35, for four years. He’s an accountant and we met through Tinder.
We lived together in Wiltshire and I trusted him completely. But the fact a total stranger knew him by name turned my stomach upside down.
I instantly panicked and started to think the worst. Had he been unfaithful or had something happened to him?
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“Yes, why?” I replied, cautiously.
“He’s not cheated,” she typed, seemingly reading my mind. “You’re too beautiful for that.”
Staring at my phone in confusion, I decided not to respond and continued preparing dinner.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about the message and later that evening I decided to get to the bottom of it. “What is this information you have?” I demanded to know.
“Liv” — if that was even her real name — danced around the question, leaving me totally frustrated.
My gut told me it was a fake account and I grew tired of going around in circles so I stopped replying, no longer prepared to engage in the conversation.
I headed to bed and tried to put it to the back of my mind.
But the next morning I had another message request from an unknown account.
“I’ve got some information,” it cryptically read. “If I tell you, you have to keep it to yourself.”
‘It was getting really creepy’
Two different women had reached out to me within 24 hours and I started to question if Joe was hiding something.
But, a few hours later, after a flurry of confusing messages, I was still none the wiser.
The next day, I received yet another message from a third account.
I felt like a broken record asking for this so-called information, so this time I blocked them immediately.
Shortly afterwards, I started to get anonymous phone calls from withheld numbers. I held back from answering at first, but my phone would ring multiple times a day.
“Who is this and what do you want?” I asked when I finally answered, frustrated by not knowing what was going on.
But the caller stayed silent. All I could hear was them breathing into the handset, as if I was in a horror film. It was getting really creepy.
“Leave me alone,” I begged, tearily.
I’d had enough and I contacted Wiltshire Police. There were no signs of the calls and messages stopping and it was starting to get out of control.
The case was referred to a stalking and social media team, but I felt like a sitting duck as call after call came through from different numbers.
Things spiralled and I would get a daily influx of messages from different online accounts. The situation made me so paranoid, I even started to become suspicious of my mates.
Fearing I was being targeted by someone I knew, I hadn’t told anyone about the messages or calls apart from Joe, and my 51-year-old dad, Andy.
“Just block and ignore,” my dad told me. But it was easier said than done.
The more the messages came, the more I pushed away people I knew.
Kirsten Dugdale
I then found out that in December 2018, this stranger had reached out to an acquaintance, claiming to be “concerned” for my welfare. This was before I’d even started receiving the mysterious calls.
“They said in the message that your partner has hit you,” the person told me.
I couldn’t believe it. Joe had never been violent towards me. My blood started to boil as I struggled to understand what they were trying to achieve.
Then other friends began texting me, asking if I was OK. They were being contacted too.
My mind went into detective mode and I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was someone close to home. I started to message my friends, demanding to know who was harassing me.
Obviously they were offended and the more the messages came, the more I pushed away people I knew.
I was becoming totally paranoid and before I knew it, I had fallen out with a handful of people.
It was also affecting my relationship with Joe, who was in despair at the shell of the person I had become.
In November 2019, nine months into my ordeal, I was devastated to learn someone had created a fake Instagram profile of me and had sent flirtatious messages from it to a local photographer, insinuating that we would be intimate together.
Thankfully, he disregarded it, but I was utterly humiliated.
'I didn't know what to do'
The accounts kept coming and I was bombarded with messages on Facebook and Instagram.
My life was being taken over by someone and it kept me up at night, not knowing who it was, or why they were doing it.
I was so traumatised by what was happening I couldn’t face being in front of the camera. I just wanted to know who was targeting me — and why.
In early 2020, I found out a fake modelling account had been created on Instagram under my name.
Over the next week, I received multiple screenshots from friends telling me the account was advertising explicit content.
I would report one account and it would be taken down, only for a new one to appear hours later. It was exhausting and I would cry at night as I didn’t know what to do.
In February 2020, I discovered I was pregnant. Ordinarily, I would have been so excited — I wanted to be a mum. But the harassment overshadowed everything.
Then, strangely, for the first time in just over a year, my online “stalker” suddenly went silent.
“Maybe it’s all over?” I hoped, stroking my growing bump. A few months later, someone called Matthew Hardy used a real account to message an ex’s dad and accused me of sleeping with him.
They got in contact and the penny dropped — he was the real person who had been harassing me.
The messages read exactly like my stalker’s with “u” instead of “you” and short, illiterate sentences.
My heart beat frantically as I dialled the police.
Kirsten Dugdale
Staring at his Facebook profile, I couldn’t believe I was finally looking at the person who had been doing this to me.
He was a complete stranger. I didn’t recall ever meeting him or seeing him anywhere.
How he had found me, got my details or why he had become fixated on me, I didn’t know.
I scrolled Hardy’s friends list on his Facebook profile and reached out to the first profile I saw — someone named Luke.
I asked him if he knew Hardy, 30, and he simply said: “You need to contact the police in Cheshire.”
Even though Luke was a total stranger, he was helpful as he could tell I was distressed.
My heart beat frantically as I dialled the police. When I spoke to PC Kevin Anderson of Cheshire Constabulary, he said he was dealing with reports against Hardy from multiple women.
For the first time, I felt I wasn’t alone.
In October 2020, there was finally some light in my life when my healthy baby girl arrived at North Bristol Hospital, weighing 6lbs 1oz.
‘He picked on women out of his league’
Crying tears of joy, I held my little girl in my arms as Joe looked proudly down at us both.
But I couldn’t rest in my pursuit of Hardy, who had made my life a misery for nearly two years.
“I’ve contacted the police and I won’t stop until you are in prison,” I messaged him on October 26, 2020, for the final time.
“The police have stacks on me, and they’ve never done a thing,” he replied.
The following March, he was finally arrested on suspicion of stalking involving fear of violence and harassment in relation to ten victims, including me.
Joe and I then decided to separate in June 2021 — the wedge this ordeal had driven between us was too wide to fix.
That same month, at Chester Crown Court, Hardy pleaded guilty to three counts of stalking with intent to cause alarm or distress, two of stalking without intent to cause alarm, and breaching a restraining order from 2013, which barred him from using fake info on social networking sites.
Hardy, from Northwich, Cheshire, was given a nine-year prison sentence in January 2022. I didn’t go to court — I was busy with a toddler and didn’t want to see him.
But I was delighted with how long he got banged up for — even though the term was reduced, on appeal, to eight years.
Hardy then ended up the subject of Can I Tell You A Secret? — which featured the stories of victims such as Abby Furness — and was dubbed Britain’s worst cyberstalker.
I wasn’t involved, as they only looked into three of the women he stalked.
I haven’t modelled since the stalking started and I miss it. But I’ve lost my confidence and don’t think I’ll ever put myself back out there like that again.
I used to have an active Instagram presence and, in a way, I think it contributed to me being stalked.
I think Hardy picked on women out of his league, as a way to talk to them.
To anyone experiencing cyberstalking, I would urge you to report it as soon as you can.
Keep as much evidence as possible, and if it continues, keep a record of it, because the more you have, the easier it is to find who is doing it and eventually get justice.
Don’t let it drop — sick people like Hardy have no right to ruin another person’s life.
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*Some names have been changed.
- If you are being cyberstalked, contact the National Stalking Helpline for help and support on 0808 802 0300 (Mon-Fri, 9.30am–4pm, except Wednesday, 9.30am-8pm) or see suzylamplugh.org.