Every International Women’s Day, I am spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing an amazing film that celebrates the joys and glory of womanhood.

But this year, I have been watching a much grimmer documentary, but one that has renewed my desire to keep fighting for a world free from violence against women and girls.

Netflix’s two-part documentary, Can I Tell You A Secret?, follows the terrifying ordeal of the victims of serial cyber-stalker Matthew Hardy. It illustrates perfectly why I announced a review last October into how our justice system responds when a woman reports that she is being stalked.

In horrifying detail, the film unpacks the grotesque lengths Hardy’s victims had to go to before their situation was taken seriously by the police. It is appalling how often these brave women were fobbed off, told that no crime had been committed, or even advised that they’d brought it on themselves.

Almost two million women experienced some form of stalking in 2022, yet despite the scale and seriousness of this problem, the struggle by Hardy’s victims to have their experiences taken seriously are depressingly common.

Since I announced my review, I have heard from anti-stalking charities that while the law around stalking is generally strong, it is simply not being used effectively to protect women like those in Can I Tell You A Secret?, who suffered far longer than they should have done before their stalker was brought to justice.

I’ve heard such experiences first hand from the presenter and activist Nicola Thorp, who also suffered a years-long ordeal at the hands of a stalker, and is now helping me with my review. Just like Matthew Hardy, Nicola’s stalker adopted multiple fake online personas, then used them to bombard her with vile and threatening messages.

Yet, shockingly, even after the police identified the man behind those messages, they would not reveal his identity to Nicola or even give her a physical description, leaving her sick with worry that any man she encountered might be the sick individual who was terrorising her with threats of rape and murder.

In December, Nicola’s stalker was finally jailed for his campaign of terror, and last year Matthew Hardy was also sentenced to nine years in prison – the longest jail term for stalking offences in British history.

But in both cases – and in the cases of so many other women – there were so many missed opportunities to get these dangerous men off our streets at an earlier stage. That’s the challenge I am determined that my stalking review will tackle, so that no woman needs to feel scared to go outdoors or go online, wondering what abuse and threats will await her this time.

On International Women’s Day, the least we owe to our daughters and granddaughters is that they can live their lives free from fear.

This column was also published in the Islington Gazette.