I was a policewoman who caught stalkers - then a gang of them came for me

Janet Wendleken couldn’t wait to retire. The detective constable had spent a long career with the Nottingham police, working with victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence and stalking. But then, just a few years before leaving her role, she led an investigation that would haunt her long after her career had ended.

In 2019, she was placed on the case of former BBC presenter Alex Belfield, who had been reported for stalking and harassing Jeremy Vine, as well as seven other victims.

Belfield, 46, worked as a DJ for BBC Radio Leeds until he was sacked for misconduct in 2010. In the years that followed, he began harassing his colleagues on social media. Thanks to the tenacity and perseverance of Janet and her colleagues, in 2022, he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for cyber stalking. Happy that justice had been done, Janet, then 57, and her husband retired to Costa Rica expecting to hear nothing more about it.

In June 2025, however, all that changed when Belfield was released from prison. He swiftly returned to X (formerly Twitter) to continue where he left off. Writing that Janet was “corrupt”, his post was seized upon by multiple online trolls who proceeded to share his claim without evidence. Used to dealing with men like Belfield, Janet challenged this by posting links to the court documents detailing the evidence against him.

Convinced that Belfield was a “political prisoner”, this did little to stop the digital onslaught. Then, in October 2025, Belfield’s post was shared by then-doctor David Cartland, a GP with 300,000 followers who proceeded to amplify Belfield’s claim while scouring the internet for any mention of Janet’s life. Posting details of her home and business, he told followers (without evidence) that Janet and her husband had “fled the UK” after a bankruptcy, that they were corrupt and encouraged his followers to stalk and harass them.

This was her first introduction to Cartland and a network of six men (some using versions of their real names, others operating anonymously) who have spent the last six years harassing and victimising people online, targeting medical professionals, members of the media and random members of the public. (Although he has since been struck off by the General Medical Council, Cartland has not been charged with stalking.)

Unified by their anti-vaccination beliefs, they have multiple victims and actively assist one another in terrorising their latest target; whether that be attacking them on social media, seeking out personal information or emailing their employers demanding they be sacked.

Shocked at their tenacity and the viciousness of their posts, which amounted to hundreds over a month, Janet hoped that the 5,000-mile distance between the UK and Costa Rica would be enough to prevent anyone actually coming for them in person. Unafraid of their endless verbal abuse and determined to stop them, Janet began an online battle to expose and challenge her abusers.

“I don’t like bullies,” says Janet, now 61. “It is the same as physical stalking in my opinion, but worse because everybody’s life is on social media and you take it home with you – you open your laptop, your phone, and there they are.”

She knew that Belfield’s licence conditions did not prevent him from using social media, but that he could still be recalled to prison if he started to harass people again. She swiftly reported him to the Nottinghamshire Police. In February 2026, this contributed to Belfield being recalled to prison but it did nothing to stop the other members of the network.

Janet also reported Cartland to Devon and Cornwall Police, but heard nothing in response. “It’s appalling”, she says. “My career spanned 30 years, and I’m totally and utterly disappointed… They’re not taking this seriously. [You can] tell a victim to block, but it’s not always as simple as that. They’ll find other ways of getting to you.”

In the last ten years, stalking offences in the UK have risen exponentially, with police forces recording tens of thousands of incidents per year. Our increased online activity has been blamed, and the problem has been exacerbated by social media platforms which repeatedly fail to prevent abuse by refusing to ban abusive accounts, allowing abusive users to make new accounts when banned and claiming no legal responsibility for content posted on their platforms.

Cyberstalking specialist Demelza Reaver works for The Cyber Helpline, a charity supporting victim-survivors experiencing online stalking, harassment, doxing, impersonation, defamation and other forms of tech-facilitated abuse. She says: “This harm is often dismissed as something that happens only ‘online,’ when in reality it can become an intrusive and sustained pattern of harm that affects how victim-survivors live day to day.”

Online stalking and harassment is rarely limited to a single post or message. “Victim-survivors may be targeted across multiple platforms, have their personal information exposed, their workplaces contacted, or their family members and friends drawn into the abuse,” she says. “Over time, this can affect their reputation, income, routines, relationships, communities and sense of safety.”

Janet isn’t the first of Cartland’s victims to speak out. Five earlier victims felt forced to contact the General Medical Council (GMC) after months of harassment went ignored by Devon and Cornwall Police. This eventually led to Cartland being struck off the medical register and removed from the DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) list, which prevents him from working with vulnerable people. It did nothing, however, to limit his online abuse of others.

Ian Robinson, 54, a bar owner, began receiving strange messages on Facebook in 2024. Having previously run a number of comedy accounts on YouTube, he was familiar with the online world and its trolls. His own output was humorous and a little offbeat and he was unfazed by the usual online banter, but this message was different.

A stranger, calling himself John Cartwright, had sent Ian a photograph of his former business partner and some other men, asking him whether he knew them. Ian did not, and quickly blocked the strange account. But then a friend told him he was being impersonated on X. Having quit the platform years earlier, Ian logged back on and discovered that an account using his image was telling the world that he was wanted by the police. The anonymous account had also posted pictures of Ian’s wife and shared his address to its couple of hundred followers.

None of it made any sense until Ian discovered a blog shared by the same anonymous account. This blog claimed that Ian’s former business partner, Simon Harris, was a “government operative” because Essex County Council had paid him to use his large social media platform to combat Covid misinformation. As Ian had once worked with Simon on a totally unrelated venture, he was named as a co-conspirator.

“I’d never expressed any opinion on vaccines, and was just getting on with my own life,” says Ian, who is originally from the West Midlands but now lives in Thailand. “It caused so much stress. It’s like when you’ve been burgled and you come home and all your drawers have been rifled through.”

He was still working out how to have the account taken down when the blog gained traction online, retweeted from one account to the next. Cartland quickly became involved and asked his 300,000 followers to find more information on Ian. This led to weeks of online harassment as strangers rifled through Ian’s social media accounts looking for “evidence” of his supposed involvement with a government cyber-warfare division known as the 77th Brigade.

“There were people calling for me to be hanged, and threatening to come to my house”, Ian says. “I was getting really worried about what people might do.” When Ian approached Cartland directly and asked him to stop, Cartland replied: “Make me an offer”. While he would not clarify what this meant, it appeared to Ian that he was asking for money. Keen to spend time with his family and protect them from this abuse, Ian opted to cut all contact.

Then one morning in early April this year, Thai police came to Ian’s bar to investigate reports of human trafficking. He showed them around the property but they left quickly, confident that he was not running a major global trafficking operation from the tiny local bar.

The Malicious Communications Act makes it illegal to send threatening, abusive, or offensive messages to others. The act was introduced in response to growing concerns about the rise of online harassment and abuse; offences can lead to sentences of up to two years in prison. Last year, Devon & Cornwall Police recorded 14,457 stalking offences, made 266 “Mal-Comms” arrests, and their website has a guide to reporting related issues.

Unfortunately, as with Janet, Ian faced indifference from the police. “I spoke to a police call handler who basically laughed at me,” he says.

Others who say they have been stalked by the network report similar experiences. In 2023, one member of the network received a police caution for his online treatment of women, but his actions resumed within weeks. It took police until May this year to issue him with a restraining order.

George* is another victim, who left X for her own safety in 2025. “I had no real presence online”, she says, but as a medical professional, she had felt obliged to challenge anti-vax misinformation and made a single pro-vax post. The attention it received led to a pile-on by the network.

Having never encountered this type of hate before, George, 50, was horrified that Cartland was trying to identify her, her address, and her employer. Concerned for her career and the safety of family and friends who followed her, George blocked everyone and hoped that would be enough.

But Cartland and his followers identified George, emailed her employer, and demanded that she be fired. Thankfully, her employer “saw right through it and the reports were thrown out”.

As with the other victims, George’s local police force was unhelpful. Telling her that Cartland could post whatever he wanted on his own social media pages, they implied that George had “brought [the abuse] on herself”. Ultimately, taking no action, they advised George to “just stop posting”. An “awful response”, George said, because it “left [her] with no voice online”.

Attacks by both Cartland and the network have continued; his most recent involved sharing a screenshot which falsely labelled Ian a paedophile and a “creepy pervert”. The GMC no longer has any jurisdiction, and the police will not intervene.

Left to fend for themselves, George, Janet and Ian repeatedly report Cartland and other network members to X. As a result, on 22 May, Cartland’s X account was finally suspended, but he continues to post from his secondary X account as well as a Facebook page where he has referred to Janet’s recently diagnosed (highly treatable) cancer as “karma”.

Left in a constant state of stress, none of Cartland’s victims have the financial means to sue for defamation, and their only other option is to leave the platforms. Janet, who spent more than 20 years fighting sex offenders and stalkers, can’t believe it has come to this. “We just want it to stop…to get on with our lives without having to deal with abuse every day….if [Cartland] stops attacking us, we will stop talking about him,” she says.

Neither Substack nor Devon and Cornwall Police have responded to our request for comment. The i Paper approached David Cartland for comment on 29 April, which he refused.