"This is a story about being stalked, it's a story of terror, it's a story of survival." So went Ryan Tubridy's introduction to his conversation with Una Ring, a woman who has endured the obsessive harassment of a former colleague. Office manager Una had what she thought was a regular working relationship with sales rep James Steele, never really conversing beyond the normal office pleasantries. Then Steele got another job and things changed. He rang Una, saying he had project stuff that she could collect from his new place of employment. Una said no, he should drop it into her office. He rang her again, asking her to meet him at his new office to offer her a job. Una again told him no, she was very happy where she worked. Steele rang Una a third time, to ask if she could help him set up the conference room in his new office, as he was having trouble in the run up to a launch. 

"I said grand, I'd give him a hand. I really didn't think anything of it, you know? And when I got to the new place of employment – we met on a road because I didn't know where it was – and that's where he made, we'll say, advances towards me, which I rebuffed." 

The following morning Steele sent Una a text apologising for his behaviour, to which Una replied, fine, but no more contact unless it's work-related. He agreed, but he kept sending her messages which had nothing to do with work.  

"Some of them were quite creepy. Some of them, he was kind of getting agitated that I wasn't texting back because I was ignoring, I was just ignoring everything, except it was work-related." 

As Una got on with things as best she could, given the circumstances, James Steele texted her to say that he was going to call around to her house.  

"He said because he hadn't heard from me, he wanted to check if I was ok. And I said, 'Look, don't call to the house. Don't contact me again.'" 

Steele told her that was fine, now that he knew she was alright and he didn't get in touch with her again for a few months. But even the brief silence between unwanted contact was no respite for Una. The whole experience up until that stage had left her, as Ryan put it, "freaked out".   

"Anytime the alert went on my phone, or anytime there was a car pulled up outside… If there was a car door outside, you'd kind of be, 'Christ, is that him?'" 

Una wasn't sleeping very well and she hadn't told anybody what had happened. She went to her GP and also reported the events up to that point to the Gardaí. Then, one morning in early July, she went out to her car to find that the wheels were painted pink. That was the start of a spiral of harassment that included spray-painted Xs and Os on the front window of Una's house, and an envelope left on her car, containing two condoms and a sexually-explicit, typed letter. The last line of the letter said, 'I am watching you.' The gardaí advised Una to seal her letterbox, one of two things that really alarmed her: 

"There were two things that really disturbed me: there was the letterbox having to be sealed and his internet search for chloroform. They were the two things I found really hard to take." 

A second letter became what Una called "the game changer". It stated bluntly that she had two choices: leave her door open and have sex by consent, or otherwise, the writer would break on and rape Una and her daughter. The letter brought the campaign of harassment to a shocking new level and the gardaí took the decision to wait to try to catch Steele attempting to break into Una's house. Four nights later, that's exactly what he tried to do. 

"I think we all knew he was going to show up. And it was four nights later that he did and thankfully he was arrested on my property." 

Steele had come to the house armed with a crowbar, rope and duct tape, as well as a prosthetic, condom-covered penis strapped to his waist. It was, as Ryan suggested, like something from a horror film. Except, of course, it was all-too real. Una told Ryan how she was so worried about what might happen to her that she considered getting a tattoo to help gardaí identify her remains in the event of Steele murdering her: 

"I said if my body was found within a reasonable period of time that, you know, my name and my date of birth are on me and it just speeds up the process of identification." 

James Steele was jailed for five years earlier this month. You can hear Ryan's full conversation with the remarkably courageous Una Ring, by going here. 

And if you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this story, you can contact Women's Aid on 1800 341 900 or the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 77 88 88. 

Niall Ó Sioradáin