Report harassment to police

Reporting harassment to the police is usually worth doing, even if you expect little to happen. The police should record it as a crime and give you a crime reference number, and they can speak to or arrest the person responsible, charge them, and ask a court to restrict their behaviour. What they cannot do is award you compensation or order content to be taken down, and many reports of online harassment go no further than the first conversation.

Harassment is a crime and a civil wrong under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, so you do not have to wait for the police. You can report and bring a civil claim for an injunction and damages at the same time. Our full guide, reporting harassment to the police: what happens next, and when to sue, explains what happens after you report, how to prepare your evidence, what to do if the police say it is a civil matter, and what outcome you can realistically expect.

If the police cannot help, these are the routes we use most:

• a solicitor's harassment warning letter, which stops many harassers without going to court;
• an online harassment injunction, or where time matters, obtaining an emergency injunction;
• private prosecution of online harassment cases, where a conviction matters.

In Lindsey Goldrick-Dean v Paul Curran, the police told our client they had no idea how to deal with thirteen years of online harassment. The High Court case we brought ended with damages, an order restraining him, and a statement read in open court. More of our work is in our online harassment case studies.