Netflix documentary Can I Tell You A Secret? explores the crimes of serial cyberstalker Matthew Hardy.
Based on a true crime podcast of the same name, the miniseries follows some of the women targeted by Hardy and the police investigation which led to him receiving the longest custodial sentence in British history for stalking online.
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Hardy is believed to have stalked at least 62 victims over 11 years by creating fake social media accounts, before he was finally convicted in 2022.
Where is Matthew Hardy now?
In January 2022, Hardy was sentenced to nine years in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts of stalking with intent to cause alarm or distress, two counts of stalking without intent to cause alarm, and breaching a restraining order from 2013. He also admitted to stalking four further women at the time.
In October of the same year, Hardy’s sentence was reduced to eight years in the court of appeal, after it was agreed that the original sentence was too high.
According to his lawyer Sara Haque, the original sentence failed to take into account Hardy’s mental disorders, including Asperger’s and autism, which apparently caused him to have a lack of empathy for those impacted by his actions.
His sentence was also reduced due to a change in the law in April 2017 for stalking offences, which the judge had failed to take into account.
Hardy is still in prison at the time of writing (February 2024). Back in September 2022, his mother Donna appeared on the Can I Tell You A Secret? podcast and said he intends to stay away from social media when he’s released from prison.
“He has said to me, ‘I don’t want anything to do with social media ever again,'” she said on the podcast. “Matthew knows he’s lost a lot, and I’ll be with him every step of the way.”
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