Can I Tell You A Secret?

What’s it about?

With the starting message “can I tell you a secret?”, a two-part docuseries explores how one man stalked, infiltrated, and wreaked havoc in the online and offline lives of female victims, whose use of social media went from positive to terrifying. This prolific cyber-stalker built a spiderweb as a pathway of destruction damaging the victims’ relationships with their family, friends, colleagues…everyone.

The facts

• Directed by Liza Williams
• English language
• Both parts are approximately 51 minutes long
• The case was first covered in a six-part Guardian podcast series in 2022

Why did it get this rating?

This film was self-rated by Netflix. You can find out more about self-rating by streaming providers here.

Bullying

Victims, who are mainly young women, receive nasty, threatening, and abusive messages via their different social platforms. This also includes messages about specific details about what they were wearing, who they were with and private information they had only shared with others in confidence. The nature and high volume of the messages are alarming and scary, which is intentional as the docuseries is partly about raising awareness around this type of online harm.

There were a wide range of life-changing consequences that were a direct impact of what the cyber-stalker was doing. This included relationships ending, victims buying weapons, and people too scared to leave home, as well as massive mental health impacts for a wide range of people involved.

Sexual violence

The stalker’s approach was to create thousands of fake profiles and contact a wide range of people connected to the victim, including their bosses, gym instructors, family members, and at times sending sexually suggestive messages and content to these people.

One victim had her professional boudoir photos stolen and sent to her employer, who was a lot older than she was. This instigated a flirty and inappropriate conversation between a fake profile of the victim and her employer.

Further information

• Why are ratings and content warnings important for me and my whānau?
• Trending True Crime: Gypsy Rose Blanchard (blog)