Sissy Thomas Interview
ST: Zanna wasn’t to know how dangerous Mason was. His criminal family background, his previous police cautions for stalking. I was not remotely surprised when the police investigation found he had been hit with a restraining order after stalking and harassing a previous girlfriend in Manchester. Sending her frightening messages, threatening to publish intimate photos he had taken of her under the understanding they would remain between them. This is likely why he left the city for Ibiza, where fate would bring him into the path of his next victim, Zanna.
But poor Zanna, she could not have known any of this when she started her affair with Mason, that this romance would prove deadly. And of course, Zanna would have faced the stigma of that too. We are so quick to judge women for their personal lives. We have seen victim blaming in so many cases, including this one. These misogynist views are the very same ones that prevent women like Zanna from being open about what is happening to them when their love affairs turn sour.
Sadly, Zanna did what I, and any professional, would advise a victim of a stalker not to do. She continued attempting to pacify her attacker’s behaviour by responding to texts and messages. Stalkers know that the vast majority of their interactions with their victims will go ignored, like a lottery player knows they will rarely, if almost never, win. However, the occasional tiny pay-out and the promise of a huge prize at the end is enough to keep them playing each week. Even the smallest acknowledgement from a victim is enough to spur a dangerous stalker on, even if to the mind of any reasonable person a message asking them to stop is embarrassing or clear enough. In the obsessive mind of a stalker, this sort of thing reinvigorates the whole process of harassment all over again.
Women are conditioned from a young age to be seen as likeable and agreeable, and to be very sensitive to the pain or disapproval of others, particularly men, whose emotional suffering is perceived as far greater than women’s, even when they have shown little outward signs. We call it male fragility, the idea that men’s emotions are so volatile, women must be especially careful not to upset or anger them with harsh rejections. Zanna demonstrated this so clearly. Despite the fact she was being blackmailed by a man she was trying to end an affair with, she went so far as to invite Mason into her home to try and settle their differences.
Mason fell into one of the most dangerous categories of stalkers we recognise: the rejected stalker. This is a person who will sometimes seek reconciliation, a relationship, the romance they are misguidedly dreaming about. But when this inevitably does not happen, they want vindication, to punish their victim. However, Mason also shows, at times, some signs of the intimacy-seeking stalker, a person who is delusional, mentally ill, and believes their victim is in love with them, or will be in the future. In some ways, this makes him more sympathetic than the typical predatory stalker, who intentionally uses threat to strike fear in their victim, and more often than not this fear is at the crux of sexually violent fantasies about the victim.
It appears Zanna invited Mason to her flat, maybe to try and end the relationship for good in a way that would finally make sense to him. Sadly, he did not have reconciliation on his mind, but something much darker.
This is why I do what I do. The red flags of a stalker are missed so easily, mistaken for devotion, obsessive devotion to the victim, what we call “love bombing”. This is the scary thing. It’s so difficult to predict who might be dangerous.