He stalked her from Malaysia to UK: Man first to be charged under Malaysian anti-stalking law
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Ms Acacia Diana tweeted about being stalked and sexually harassed by a man for almost eight years.
PHOTO: ACACIA DIANA/TWITTER
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PETALING JAYA - A 37-year-old man will be the first person to be charged under Malaysia’s new anti-stalking law.
The man allegedly stalked and sexually harassed a popular female photographer for years, sending her lewd photographs of himself, and even followed her to the United Kingdom.
Petaling Jaya police chief Mohamad Fakhrudin Abdul Hamid said the man would be charged under the newly minted Section 507A of the Penal Code pertaining to stalking.
“He will be brought to the Shah Alam court in the next two days to face the charges,” he said when contacted on Wednesday.
The new law defines stalking as a repeated act of harassment intended to or likely to cause distress, alarm or fear to anyone’s safety.
Media outlets had reported that Ms Acacia Diana, the female photographer, had made police reports about online sexual harassment since 2018.
In a series of tweets in July 2023, she described how she was stalked and sexually harassed by a man for almost eight years.
She said the ordeal started in 2016 when she received “weird comments” on her blog, where she documented her travels and projects.
She claimed that a year later, when she was at a restaurant, a “creepy man” came up to her while she was with a friend and told her that he liked her work.
“I thanked him and told him to leave us alone,” she tweeted.
She also claimed that while she was studying in the UK in November 2017, she got a call from her family saying that a man came by to her house and told her father that he wanted to be her friend.
In December 2022, she discovered that the suspect had gone to the UK, and he later signed up for a class that she had attended.
She claimed that the man also sent her direct messages on Instagram of himself masturbating.
He was arrested in the UK and released on bail while police investigated the case there.
Ms Acacia claimed that the police there intended to charge him with sexual harassment and stalking, but he left for Malaysia and did not show up for his court date.
She claimed that since April this year, the man continued to harass her by sending her pictures of his private parts. THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK
