A north London woman says she has been left at the mercy of an obsessive stalker because the Metropolitan Police refuses to arrest him.

Janet (not her real name) said she has been physically attacked and believes her dog was poisoned.

But despite persistent reports about the man, who lives in her Islington neighbourhood, she said he has never been arrested.

Police have refused to investigate, she says, even when presented with physical evidence.

Last month, emergency services were scrambled to Janet’s home after she reported that her stalker had thrown “bleach water” in her face.

But when he told police he had spilled the substance in her face by accident, they accepted his story.

The man is subject to a court order banning him from harassing Janet, she said, thanks to private legal action funded by her housing association – but she says police let him breach it with impunity.

“I have so many crime reference numbers,” she said. “It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

She said the Met had not learned from high-profile failures to properly deal with predatory men, like killer cop Wayne Couzens.

Poison?

It all began, said Janet, when she moved into the area 20 years ago.

The man knocked on her door and introduced himself.

But then the knocks kept coming and he eventually asked her out for a drink.

Janet, already in a relationship, declined. Her partner soon moved in, she said, and the nuisance neighbour largely left her alone.

But in 2018 her relationship ended. Then, in 2020, her son moved out.

“As soon as I was completely on my own, it got nasty,” she said.

The man loiters outside her home and she has repeatedly caught him pouring what smells like bleach on her garden, she claimed.

In spring, her dog was rushed to the RSPCA with a sudden mystery illness, Janet says, which the vet thought might be a poisoning.

Soon after, Janet caught the man leaving balls of rolled up meat outside her home.

She called the police, who seized them as evidence but then never tested them.

A police email said forensics “refused to test” them because “the threshold for toxicology testing is very high”.

In other words, Janet believes, “they don’t want to spend the money.”

“I’d pay for it,” she added. “But they won’t test them and they won’t give them back to me so I can test them either.”

Bleach

In April, said Janet, things escalated further when the man threw a bucket of water in her face that smelled like bleach.

London Fire Brigade sent two crews to “a chemical incident”, it confirmed, and “treated a woman… before leaving her in the care of the London Ambulance Service”.

“When the police came, I had ambulance staff here and firefighters, all tending to me,” Janet said. “It was that serious.

“The police were trying to talk to me and the firefighters said, ‘Sorry, she’s got to come back to the bathroom with us, we need to keep dousing her’.

“But they still didn’t arrest him. They just talked to him and then left.”

The Met said: “Officers spoke to both parties. There was no evidence of any crime. This was explained to the complainant, who said she understood why this was the case.”

“That is totally untrue,” claimed Janet. “I was furious with them. I was saying, ‘Why have you not arrested him'?"

The skin on the side of her face was left inflamed, she said, and she could not see properly out of one eye for several days.

Following

“His latest thing is following me,” Janet continued.

She is so frightened that she has had the fire brigade fit an anti-arson attack letterbox.

“The police response has been horrendously bad,” she said.

“I am vulnerable, living on my own. They are not arresting him for criminal offences. Even following someone around, stalking them, is a criminal offence.”

The force said: “This is an ongoing dispute and officers from the local Safer Neighbourhood Team are in regular contact with both parties.”

The Gazette is not identifying Janet, so as not to prejudice any future proceedings.