THE FACT that the jailing of stalker Anthony Burstow was a rare, landmark conviction strongly suggests that a distinct offence should be on the law books to specifically combat this menace.

We believe that this is the case rather than it proving, as Home Office MInister David Maclean indicates today, that existing legislation is not so inadequate.

For consider the three-year hell to which Burstow's victim, Tracey Sant, was subjected before the law came to her aid.

Burstow was finally charged with the unusual offence of causing psychological grievous bodily harm but it was too late for the preservation of his victim's marriage and mental health.

Consider too the case we cite tonight of the East Lancashire couple who, on finding the law powerless, endured months of anguish when their teenage daughter was stalked by a much older man.

Such instances do not inspire confidence that the law is strong enough, particularly when the major aspect of stalking - following a person - is not a crime.

Mr Maclean talks of tightening up the law and studying that in other countries where stalking is an offence.

True, it may prove that clearly defining the offence is not a simple task.

But the existing gaps in the law's net are so evidently wide that the government would do well to respond positively to the Bill put forward by Rossendale and Darwen MP Janet Anderson to make stalking a specific offence.

For, rather than a pondering review of current and comparable legislation, urgent action is needed.

And it is crazy that, still, the police can often only act against evil stalkers when, frequently after subjecting their victims to years of terror, they finally resort to violence - though they deserved to have been locked up long before.

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