Are You My Cyber Stalker?

The fact is that “Can I Tell You a Secret?” Netflix’s two-part documentary about the most prolific-horrific cyber and real life stalker in U.K. history has so many contrasts ranging from absurdity to sociological depth that it’s honestly hard to parse on the surface. This story is so weird and crazy that there is no objective angle to approach it.

This is the story of how the lives of three young girls, Abby Furness, Zoe Jade Hallam and Lia Marie Hambly, were turned into hell for two years by an also very young cyberstalker named Matthew James Hardy, born in 1991, but with 10 arrests, about 100 cyber-harassed women and more than a decade carrying out these criminal acts, and (check this out) how he got himself caught. Yes, it is as confusing as it is real. But forget about your average cyber stalker, this guy is Lex Luthor, the Thanos of cyber stalkers! The documentary has two parts: in the first, we have all the details regarding what happened to the victims and in the second episode the poor police investigation that seems more like an SNL sketch.

Humanity, we have a problem

The documentary reflects a harsh generational reality and the role that social networks play in the daily lives of the vast majority of people. But for a generation that does not know a life without Instagram or Facebook, the first statements of the three victims are a reminder of the not very good effect that social networks have. In a few words and with an emotion almost comparable to a trance state, the three describe their relationship with social networks as a necessity in their lives. Without them they would be unhappy. They wouldn’t know how to exist. They talk about posting everything they do on social media and the happiness this brings them. And when I say they post everything, I mean everything; what they eat, every place they visit, their friends, families, everything. Which makes the work of a cyber stalker or any criminal predator easier.

But this is the reality of our society and new addictions. Now, how did this guy come into the girls’ lives? This is where the madness begins.

Can I Tell You A Secret? NOOOOOOO

For years, Matthew James Hardy has used the same MO: it doesn’t matter if it was about women he knew or complete strangers; He created fake accounts and after sending a few messages, he asked the question, Can I Tell You a Secret? I can trust in you? Obviously common sense would say that precisely for cases like this, there is the block button and that’s it, end of story. But these three girls, like many others, who need and want attention, responded with an immediate and surprising: “yes, of course, you can trust me.” Of course the secret was: I’m going to make your life miserable to levels you could never imagine.

Then Matthew began stalking, filling them with fear, sending photos of them to friends; even stealing their identities and creating fake accounts. And he didn’t stop with them, but he did the same with each of their friends and members of their families. One of them is a model and had a nude photo shoot with a photographer, as Matthew posed as her and asked the photographer to send him the photos and then started a sexual chat with the girl’s boss. And he sent him the photos. Quite a catastrophe.

The British authorities did nothing. They didn’t know who was behind all this. And two years passed, two nightmare years.

So the first part of the documentary is this: what these girls suffered after accepting to be told the supposed secret. But how do the girls find Matthew? They don’t do it, at some point he himself sends messages from his personal Facebook. And even a video.

Part Two: Dumb Detective

Here the show introduces us to Northwich, Cheshire, police officer Kevin Anderson, who immediately narrates that this is the big case of his career. And the following seems like a lie, but it was real: one day he receives a complaint from the stalker himself, Matthew Hardy, since some guys had thrown bricks at his house.

Hardy tells Anderson that it’s maybe because of his bad reputation. Anderson doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And Hardy, as if it were of no importance, mentions a story published in The Guardian several years ago about his criminal acts as a cyber stalker. Anderson hadn’t even googled who this guy was. The report mentions dozens of cases, several arrests. And… despite this, he lets Hardy go. To summarize a long and I repeat, strange story, Officer Anderson finds a lot of complaints of cyber harassment and runs into the three protagonists of the documentary, with whom he contacts but despite questioning Hardy again, nothing happens. .

But the stress almost killed me when they took Hardy’s phone and tablet and Anderson says it will take weeks to search his social media. WTF? Give that tablet and phone to any 15-year-old and he will do the job in 15 minutes. All of this took months until the prosecution decided to go against Hardy, who managed to evade a trial in the past for two reasons: first, the lack of a strong law in the U.K. against cyber harassment and second, Hardy always declared that he was diagnosed lately with autism-Asperger’s and that given the bullying he suffered as a young man he did these things without being conscious, since it was the only way he knew to relate to people.

In the end, the judge did not buy the story and gave him the longest sentence for any cyber stalker: nine years in prison. And now, the girls enjoy giving interviews like the influencers they always wanted to be. Fairly happy ending, right?

Technicalities

I have two problems regarding the direction of this documentary. The first question I would ask director Liza Williams is why she only interviewed the girls, each in one place. I mean, she could have done some interviews in a park, in their homes, I don’t know, watching a horror movie. And not always in the same place. And the most important and terrifying thing about the docu: for some inexplicable reason, every few seconds there appear to be images of electrical towers with strange lights (which have nothing to do with the story), I counted at least twenty shots. Or I don’t know if it is the same repeated one. But at one point I thought, could it be that the cyber stalker is an alien and this will have an extraterrestrial twist? Too bad it wasn’t actually like that.