1 day ago
29 ARTICLE AD
Simon Jordan has spoken candidly about his own past stalking ordeal, following recent events surrounding Emma Raducanu.
The British tennis star was reduced to tears on court during her second round defeat to Karolina Muchova at the Dubai Tennis Championship on Tuesday after spotting a 'stalker' in the crowd.
4
Raducanu became visibly distressed and alerted officials to the presence of a male spectator, who had previously approached her following her first round victory at the tournament.
The WTA later released a statement revealing that the individual in question would be banned from all future events on the tour, having 'exhibited fixated behaviour' towards the 2021 US Open champion.
Raducanu's recent ordeal comes after a previous unrelated stalking incident three years ago.
In 2022, Amrit Magar was handed a five-year restraining order for stalking the Brit, who was a teenager at the time.
The 35-year-old man was found to have visited her family home in Bromley three times, and stole items that had been left on the front porch.
A court heard how the trauma left Raducanu 'constantly looking over her shoulder', and that she no longer felt 'safe in her own home'.
And talkSPORT's Jordan has now addressed Raducanu's recent ordeal, while opening up on his own similar experience of being stalked.
In 2006, Tara Stout received a suspended jail sentence after being found guilty of harassing Jordan, whilst he was the chairman of Crystal Palace.
Westminster Magistrates Court heard how the 35-year-old woman bombarded the businessman with lewd text messages and phone calls, as well as sending him underwear and love letters.
Discussing recent incidents surrounding Raducanu on talkSPORT today, Jordan said: "It's disconcerting. It's challenging for her. It's an invasion of her privacy, her space.
4
4
“It's dealing with the strange world that we live in.
“And we hear the horrors of people that do things in society because they develop fixations, and they develop ideologies or beliefs and challenges, and whatever else we see in this world at times."
The 57-year-old then shared his own previous ordeal, which saw his family targeted with death threats by Stout.
He recalled: “I had a relatively high profile situation, it ended up, I think the girl went to prison or went close to prison. She was certainly in custody for a period of time.
“She developed a fixation with me, believe it or not, and bombarded me with hundreds and hundreds of messages and turned up at the hotel in all kinds of attire, threatening to kill my nieces and immediate family.
“And it was a difficult period. The police were trying to track her for months and months. She was not very well, I suspect."
4
Jordan went on to detail how the ongoing circumstances eventually led to him taking legal action.
He continued: “It ended up with me going to court and prosecuting her because it wouldn't stop and her fixation wouldn't stop.
“So it ended up in a very difficult set of circumstances, and disconcerting, when people are turning up, leaving lewd pictures of themselves in hotel elevators and turning up at your football stadium in certain levels of undress, and bombarding you with messages and all kinds of things.
“It can become disconcerting. And it became so disconcerting. It also became for me, I was irritated by it because I'm getting bombarded with messages every day.
“Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of messages from this person because I'd had an interaction with her in the past, but that was a very loose interaction and it turned into a fixation on her part.
"And hopefully she's better now.”
