Mum whose abusive ex used AirTag to stalk her urges women to use Clare’s Law
A mum whose ex was branded a walking red flag following an ‘insidious’ campaign of coercive control has urged other women to use Clare’s Law to check whether their partner has a history of domestic abuse.
Stephanie Boardman, 31, says she is now too scared to leave the house after fleeing her relationship with 33-year-old Franco Lucci last year.
Just before they moved in together, one of her daughters found an Apple AirTag hidden under the seat in her car – which the now-convicted stalker Lucci tried to claim he had simply lost.
Later in the relationship, Stephanie found he had activated a Google Maps tracker on her phone without her knowledge after he texted asking why she was at a particular location.
Just weeks before she finally escaped, Stephanie became aware of the fact her boyfriend would know what she had been saying on private phone conversations with her own mum.
She later found out he had secretly placed a phone in their living room to record her while he was out.
Lucci also threw her phone at a wall for speaking to another man on Facebook. He was also ‘not happy’ about the amicable relationship she maintained with the father of her two older children.
Stephanie said: ‘I let a lot of things slide, because I did love him. He had that control over me.
‘He had that power over me, I was completely in love with him, so I did a lot of things that he did and let the red flags at the beginning slide.’
Now, Stephanie, who lives in Wigan, Greater Manchester, is hoping to promote the use of ‘Clare’s Law’.
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She said she was unaware of the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, which allows you to request usually confidential information about a romantic partner’s criminal history, when she first reported Lucci.
She only found out about it when the police applied for a disclosure on her behalf after she moved to withdraw her complaint while stuck in the ‘fantasyland’ of believing ‘everything will be OK’.
The mum-of-three said: ‘I didn’t originally know about Clare’s Law, it was the police that applied for the disclosure on my behalf, because they deemed it in my best interest.
‘Originally, I retracted my statement. At that point I was still in love with him and very much in a fantasyland of “we’ll get back together and everything will be OK”.
‘Then it just went worse. I got a fire in my bonnet. The Clare’s Law highlighted so much of his past.’
She discovered he was known to Avon and Somerset Police, having threatened to kill another victim and punching a hole in a wall.
The disclosure also noted that Lucci had a non-molestation order against him in relation to one of his former partners.
Lucci, of Bolton, admitted controlling and coercive behaviour along with stalking and was given a 20-month sentence, suspended for two years.
Judge Nicholas Clarke KC said: ‘This is a case which involves insidious and pernicious behaviour by you, where you had used an AirTag and have activated the tracking of her phone on your device and used a secondary audio recording device in her home for up to 12 hours at a time to monitor every aspect of her life.
‘You have broken her devices, and you have behaved in the most appalling manner towards her.’
He added: ‘You should really carry around a red flag to warn any future partners of your misconduct.’
The abuser was also given a restraining order for 10 years which means he can’t go within 50 metres of any address Stephanie lives at, and he’s subject to a five-month curfew from 8pm to 7am.
Stephanie says she’s glad justice has been served – but she is still too afraid to leave the home alone.
She said: ‘I don’t work at the minute, due to everything that’s been going on. I haven’t left the house since February last year.
‘I don’t leave the house on my own. One of his big threats was he was going to take [my son] and run away to Italy and I’d never see him again.
‘That’s been one of the forefront fears in my head. If I go out on my own, without backup, if he approaches me all he has to do is grab the pram and he’s gone.
‘I don’t leave the house out of fear of that.’
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