Original subtitles

(phone buzzes)

(somber music)

- [Narrator] 91 million of us worldwide

search for love online.

- She was looking for love.

- She wanted someone that would give her

the freedom to be herself.

- He looked like a normal, nice guy.

(dog barking) (people chattering)

- [Narrator] But internet dating can be a dangerous game.

- [Reporter] The mother of two small boys

reported missing early Sunday morning.

- [Narrator] In the UK alone, crime linked to online dating

has risen 450% over five years.

- This is a predator's paradise.

- It's that dark side of the web

that people don't realize exists.

- [Narrator] These are the real-life love stories

that ended in tragedy.

- Each day she was living in fear.

- I knew that he was no angel, but he really had me tricked.

- [Narrator] So how well do you

really know the person you're dating?

- She didn't stand a chance against that monster of a man.

(camera shutters clicking)

(tense music)

(somber music)

- Manchester's an amazing city.

It's very lively, there's lots going on.

And Manchester and Salford pretty much sit

alongside each other, so the boundary of Salford

crosses through Manchester city center, really.

- The people that live in and around Salford

are some of the most fabulous people you'll ever meet.

I certainly enjoyed a number of years

policing the streets of Salford.

Greater Manchester Police covers

an area of about two and three-quarter million people.

It's not without its challenges.

There's still very deprived areas in Salford,

there's certain parts that suffered quite badly

with crime, low-level disorder,

but this case shocked the local community of Salford.

They were appalled at this senseless and tragic murder.

(tense music)

- [Reporter] 36-year-old Claire Wood's badly burnt body

was found in a bedroom at her home in Blackfriars.

Weeks before Miss Wood's body was found,

she'd gone to police to tell them

that she feared for her safety,

and to make an allegation of assault against a man.

(somber music) (birds singing)

- She was a gregarious, talkative, easygoing girl,

and she was always game for a laugh.

She was a lovely daughter.

I couldn't have asked any more of any kid.

She was full of life, full of beans,

and ready, ready to smile.

- A very happy character.

She always wanted cuddles and hugs,

and she was incredibly loving.

She was generous to a fault.

Even though she was broke herself,

she'd give her last penny away to make somebody else happy,

and that made her happy.

She was the perfect sister, I'd say.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] In 1999, age 29, Claire Wood

had a daughter and got married.

The couple moved to Manchester

about 40 miles way from her father and brother.

But Claire's marriage broke down.

- She'd been with her partner for eight years,

and all of a sudden she says, "I've moved out."

- [Narrator] Claire was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

- Bipolar disorder's a disorder

which involves extreme highs and extreme lows of mood.

Think about normal mood and how we have ups and downs.

Well, these are really extreme.

So Claire's bipolar would've left her

feeling very, very vulnerable.

(soft music)

- [Narrator] Claire began to receive

medical help for her condition.

She settled into a new flat in Salford.

Her daughter stayed with her ex-husband during the week.

- Claire had her daughter every weekend that she could,

so that precluded her going out at a weekend.

Most people were working during the week,

and Claire was never what you call flush with money.

- [Narrator] Battling loneliness,

Claire turned to the internet for company.

She also began to use it to look for love.

- The internet has a lot going for it, it really has,

and if it's one way to meet a partner, why not?

(inquisitive music)

- [Narrator] Radio journalist Michelle Livesey

reports on stories in and around Manchester,

and was heavily involved in Claire's case.

- It's difficult when you're a single mom

and it's difficult when you're balancing

work life with all your other responsibilities.

How do you find time to then socialize

and try and find somebody to have a relationship with?

- Everybody wants to be loved.

They all wanna meet the right person.

I'm not saying the perfect person

'cause nobody's perfect,

yeah, everyone's got their little quirks

and things that you find annoying,

but she wanted to find somebody

that just loved her for who she was.

- Who isn't in search for love?

As human beings, I don't think

we were designed to be loners.

In fact, you look down on loners as hermits or whatever.

It's always a derogatory term.

We're all looking to be somebody special,

and I don't think Claire was any different.

- Claire Wood was diagnosed with bipolar depression.

She's then entered into online dating sites.

Now, does this amplify her vulnerability?

Without a doubt, it does.

She's gonna be meeting strangers,

she's gonna have people who are gonna lie,

but of course she's vulnerable, very vulnerable.

What the bipolar means,

she might invite people into her life

without doing the necessary psychological checks

or the risk assessment we may do

when we meet somebody for the first time.

So without a doubt, just the states

that she was in at that time psychologically

meant her vulnerability was amplified

by going to all the social media

and online dating sites that she did.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] In April 2007, Claire met her match

and an online friendship quickly developed.

The man's name was George Appleton.

- I didn't really think much when she said

that she had met George Appleton online.

I just thought, I'm pleased for you.

She was lonely.

Yeah, I mean, if she's met somebody that's good for her

and is gonna get her out and about

and do her good, it felt great.

- [Narrator] George was 40-year-old

fairground worker who lived nearby.

- Claire and George Appleton started talking online,

sending each other messages quite frequently

of not just the internet dating site that they met on,

but then social media, talking about each other,

what each other liked to do,

each other's interests, each other's background.

He portrayed himself to be this person

that Claire could rely on,

this person that loved Claire, that would look after her,

and that would spend the rest of his life with her.

So there's Claire thinking she's got

this perfect relationship where

she's met a man who is showing her attention,

he's showing her love, he's showing her affection,

he's making her feel special.

(soft music)

- [Narrator] It wasn't long before Claire

brought her new man to meet her family.

- She turned up at my house one day,

totally unexpected, I didn't expect a visit at all,

turns up in this death-trap of a car

with my niece in it, my young niece,

and I'm thinking, you've driven

all the way from Manchester in that?

With my sister and my niece?

I mean, that were a bad introduction in the first place.

But as soon as he were in, he'd never met me before,

I were finishing some work on the computer,

and George turns around to me, he says,

"Oh, I'm good with computers.

"I hacked my ex-girlfriend's email account."

And I'm thinking, you're telling the brother

of the girl that you're dating?

Is this guy an absolute idiot, what?

So I just stood up and I says, "You're going."

I says, "That's it, you're done."

And so I got my sister,

"You can come back whenever you want,"

I says, "but don't bring him back, he's bad news."

- [Narrator] Claire's dad also had

an uneasy feeling about George.

- He had just come from my son's house.

She took him through the door

and I just took an instant dislike to this lad.

There was something about this lad, it turned my stomach.

When he came to my house, I thought he was casing the joint,

and I couldn't get him out the door quick enough.

I thought, you've made a mistake here kid,

and just to reinforce that,

my son came down and said, "Have you seen him?"

I thought this lady's making a hell of a mistake,

and I told her so, and she said

no, it was what she wanted, and fine.

She was no kid, she was a 36-year-old woman,

where her brain, and she said, "No, he's what I wanted."

- Claire meets George Appleton online,

and we know that Claire's father and brother

took an instant dislike to George.

Is that because of the online world?

Does that mean she's willing to forgive

any shortcomings that other individuals may see in George?

Well, not necessarily, that could happen in life.

The online world doesn't change that.

But what we must remember here,

the reason why people use dating apps

is because of the ease, but also because they're lonely,

and of course that is the aspect

of why she might forgive any shortcomings

that George was portraying, because she's got a new partner.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] As the relationship progressed,

it continued to create friction.

- She came back to me months later and said,

"We're thinking of getting married in November."

And I says, "Well if you do that, girl,"

I just said, "It's gonna put an awful strain

on me and your brother," I says,

"Because both of us took an instant dislike to this laddie."

(tense music)

- [Narrator] In the following weeks,

Claire became increasingly isolated

and reliant on George.

- My sister was unfortunately

suffering from bipolar depression,

which means any sort of attention that she got

was an uplift to her.

She also felt a little bit sorry for this lad.

He'd had a bit of a rough past by the sound of things.

She thought, give this lad another go,

nobody can be that bad, and I think she just thought

maybe she could save this character

just like she felt he was saving her.

- She thought he was the light of her life,

he was gonna do everything for her,

he went for her prescriptions,

he went for her shopping, he never left her side,

but little did she know that was part of the grooming.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] Retired Detective Superintendent Phil Owen

has studied the original

Greater Manchester Police investigation into Claire's case.

- Their relationship started out

probably as one of mutual love.

I think it probably quickly turned

into one of a coercively controlling relationship

where he was doing his utmost to try and isolate,

both emotionally and physically, Claire

from her extended family network

and maybe from friends as well.

- He probably knew that Claire's

father and brother didn't like him,

so the more he can isolate Claire through control,

the more he actually then controls her

because he's actually turning her

against her own family and her own friends,

because he wants her to believe

the only thing that's good for her

in her life is George Appleton.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] Six months passed and George

continued to dominate Claire's life.

But he had been leading a secret life of his own.

He had been having affairs with

four other women whom he'd met online.

- Claire wasn't stupid,

Claire was an intelligent young woman,

and I think as time went on,

she did start to learn a bit more

about George Appleton's true colors,

and the fact that it wasn't just her.

She realized he'd actually been

having an affair with several other women

that he'd been talking to on internet dating chat rooms.

- Claire discovered this, and obviously

she saw that as a line in the sand and said to Appleton,

"That's it, our relationship is over."

- I was surprised it finished, but it did almost immediately

as soon as Claire found out that he was

texting or whatever other women.

She gave him his marching orders.

She didn't trust him and she asked just to leave it alone

and to back off, and I think she was hoping

for a friendly breakup,

but that wasn't to be the case.

- [Narrator] Appleton refused to move on.

- Claire was met with a tirade of abuse,

harassment, damage to her property,

and I think at that time she must've been very frightened,

so went to Pendleton Police Station

to make an initial complaint

of criminal damage and harassment,

and was seen at Pendleton by a police officer

who took a statement from Claire

and for want of a better phrase,

opened an investigation into George Appleton.

- [Narrator] The next day, on the 8th of October, 2008,

18 months since they first met,

Appleton went to Claire's again.

(somber music)

He began battering on her front door.

Claire was too frightened to answer.

She called the police.

- George Appleton was arrested.

He admitted the damage but denied any harassment

and denied any violent behavior towards Claire.

(soft music)

He was bailed from the police station

to return in early November.

We placed various restrictions on him

not to contact and also not go into Claire's street.

- He had these strict bail conditions

not to enter Claire's street,

but that didn't stop George Appleton.

He always managed to find a way around that,

to the point where he actually came into this alleyway

and was caught peeking over the fence

into Claire's backyard, letting her know

that he was still here,

that he was still gonna be harassing her.

Bail conditions weren't gonna stop him.

(tense music)

- He just kept threatening to burn the house down

while she was in bed.

Said he was gonna kill her,

it was just different things,

just menacing threats all the time.

Obviously I didn't receive the phone call,

I can only go from what my sister was telling me,

and how upset and scared she was getting.

- It sounds like the harassment

was a sustained campaign against Claire,

and it's likely that George was trying

to regain control over Claire, perhaps by scaring her,

by showing her that he's still there,

and no matter what she did, she couldn't get rid of him.

His breaking of rules and any penalties

imposed upon him to stop harassing Claire

does show someone who is not put off by authorities

and who's gonna persist and persist

until they get what they want.

- Each day she was living in fear.

She was subjected to death threats,

she was subjected to harassment,

and it's just shocking,

and it's sad, it's really, really sad to think

that somebody lived with that amount of fear.

- [Narrator] Former senior police officer Colin Sutton

has worked on many high-profile murder cases

involving domestic violence.

- Claire does the right thing when all this is going on.

She reports it to the police and says,

"Look, this man is actually having an effect

"on my life and on my wellbeing."

But I think what we see as the story unfolded

was that the protection that the law

gives to people like Claire from people like Appleton

is cumbersome, it's kind of bureaucratic,

and it's not designed for quick, snappy responses.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] This bureaucratic system

allowed Appleton to make Claire's life a living hell.

- She went from a somewhat outgoing girl

to being one of the observers of life.

- [Narrator] In November 2008,

Claire decided to seize control of the situation.

- Claire writes a letter to the officer in the case.

That letter is asking that Appleton

doesn't undergo a custodial sentence.

Part of her motives then may be

feeling sorry for George Appleton,

and quite rightly Claire was worried about her own safety

and the safety of her daughter,

and was frightened of the consequences for those actions.

- It was actually quite a creative solution

that Claire thought she could bring to the situation

by writing the police and says, "Okay, enough's enough.

"I will drop the charges against Appleton,

"I don't want you to do anything about him,

"but I want nothing to do with him."

(inquisitive music)

- [Narrator] Claire's letter seemed

to have the desired effect.

Appleton's harassment subsided,

and she was able to contemplate

spending a happy Christmas with her family.

- She came over here for Christmastime,

which we had a very, very good, a very good Christmas,

it was lovely for her to be down here

and I drove her around to see

aunties, uncles, grandma, granddad's,

I got her to do the works.

We had a good laugh.

It was great seeing in the new year,

and with my sister, I'd never done that before.

Not with my sister.

- Just after Christmas, officers visited Claire

and Claire reiterated that she wasn't seeing Appleton,

hadn't had any reoccurrence of any threats or any issues.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But Appleton hadn't gone away.

On the 18th of January, 2009, Claire called police

claiming that Appleton had sexually assaulted her.

- Appleton is arrested in the early hours

of the morning on suspicion

of attempted rape and sexual assault.

He's taken into the police station,

he's interviewed, and then he's subsequently bailed.

Police at that time didn't have sufficient evidence

to charge him and go to the Crown prosecution service,

so he was bailed to reattend

the police station in about April.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But for Claire, there was more terror to come.

- What then ensued over the next couple of days

was that Appleton contacted Claire on social media

using a variety of different social platforms,

clearly in contradiction to his bail conditions.

He wasn't allowed in any way to contact Claire,

but he was doing so.

- He carried on contacting Claire

not physically or verbally but via social media.

The psychology behind that is power,

the fact that he feels he can get away with it.

He was in control of this relationship,

and that's the psychology behind harassment.

The fact that, how much more can I push you?

How much more can I say?

How far can I take this?

And he was prepared to take it the whole way.

- Every time a profile got reported by my sister,

they blocked the profile,

then he'd just make another one,

and he just kept coming, and coming, and coming,

and there was nothing she could do about it.

The only way that she could do anything about it

would be stop using social media again, completely,

but that would've made my sister a victim again.

- He was on bail for harassment

and criminal damage from October.

He's on bail again now for an attempted rape.

Those two investigations weren't

joined very effectively in understanding

the true picture of the risk

that George Appleton posed toward Claire.

- Having just been released,

it looks like he might have just decided

he needed to put an end to this.

(somber music) (birds singing)

- It must have been about the 5th or 6th of February.

We hadn't heard from Claire,

and I phoned my ex-son-in-law.

I said, "Look, would you do me a favor?

"Go in, bust, and tell my daughter

"to pull her finger out and get in touch.

"We're getting quite concerned."

- [Narrator] When he arrived at the property,

Claire's ex-husband let himself in.

Inside, he found Claire dead.

- The day that we first came aware of Claire's murder

was like any other news day really.

A busy news day, we were setting

our news agenda for the day,

and an email dropped from Greater Manchester Police

to say that a woman's body had been

found at a house in Salford.

All we know at this stage is a 36-year-old woman

been found with horrific injuries.

(birds singing)

- I was just leaving my place at work,

which was Armley prison.

I was just handing in my keys when

one of the warders said to me,

"Mr. Brown, there's a phone call for you."

And I picked up the phone.

The lady on the other end of the phone said to me,

"Mr. Brown, I'm just phoning to tell you

"we've just found your daughter's body.

"You can't come to the house because Claire's home

"is now a scene of crime, and until such time

"as we've finished with it, it's out of bounds to you.

"We will be in touch and we'll give you

"as much news as we can as soon as we can,"

and put the phone down.

Well, I walked out of the prison in a daze.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] Claire had been found in the bedroom.

She had been raped, strangled, and an attempt had been made

to set fire to the bed where she lay.

While her body was found on the 6th of February, 2009,

it's believed she was murdered

on or around the 2nd of February.

- It was the last thing on your mind

that would ever happen to you,

and I couldn't think straight,

I couldn't understand why this was happening to me,

or why it had happened to my daughter.

You expect to go through life, and you're expecting

to better your parents and your grandparents

because that's the natural progression of things,

but Claire should've been stood at my grave,

not the other way around.

Nothing prepares you for the earth-shattering news

that you get that your kid's gone,

and where my kid went, I wouldn't wish on any other parent.

- We didn't know much about the victim at all,

but we did have that information

about the suspect police were looking for,

we had the picture, we had the details

of the car he was driving, we had what he was wearing,

and more importantly we had his name

and that man was called George Appleton.

(tense music)

- There was DNA on a cigarette

that was recovered from the property.

We know he had the motive for it,

we know he'd previously assaulted

and was on bail for attempted rape,

and there were certain other forensic recovery undertaken

at the address that led the investigation

to believe that George Appleton alone

was the prime suspect for Claire's murder.

- [Narrator] But Appleton had vanished,

and a national manhunt began.

On the 6th of February, 2009,

CCTV footage was released of Appleton from the day before.

The police, media, and local community

all joined forces to try and bring

the prime suspect to justice.

- The murder of Claire Wood shocked Salford.

They were appalled at this senseless and tragic murder.

So clearly the investigation team at the time

enlisted the support of the local community

and the wider media.

- George, if you're listening to this,

if you have access to the website,

I'd urge you to make contact with the police.

If you don't feel confident in doing that,

can I ask that you contact your solicitor?

It's very important that we speak soon.

- Police were asking people to let them know

if they'd been in touch with him online

in the months leading up to this murder.

(tense music)

- We knew he was having online relationships

and physical relationships with other women

who potentially could be at risk,

and the priority for Greater Manchester police

during that time was to catch Appleton

at the earliest opportunity.

- [Narrator] As word of Claire's brutal murder

rippled through the community,

the news came as a huge shock to one local:

Appleton's ex-girlfriend, Carol Agnew.

- I was in work and my friend Marie,

she was living with me, and she rung me,

and she said, "You're not gonna believe this."

I says, "What?"

She said, "George."

She told me over the phone, I nearly broke down.

I came straight home and I phoned the police straight up

because we didn't know what happened to George,

'cause George went missing, and I phoned up the police,

and they offered me a panic button up to this stage,

but what I heard about Claire,

(Carol inhales)

(Carol sighs)

it just broke my heart.

- [Narrator] Carol had suffered

a similar chilling experience with Appleton.

- From the beginning, he was quite a nice guy.

Wouldn't've thought that he was gonna

change down the line because he used to put on the charm,

he used to be nice and gentle,

and he just used to be charming.

I started seeing that he was getting

a bit more possessive on me.

He wanted to be in control.

That's the way he was coming across to me.

So I decided to end the relationship,

and I told him, and he was going mad at me.

He just kept constantly ringing me after that,

and that's when it all started,

the rejection started coming in,

the nastiness, the threats, he was gonna kill me,

he was gonna do this to me, do that to me.

I just couldn't believe he could've

done this to another human being.

What I went through, he did to her.

- [Narrator] And it wasn't just Carol and Claire,

George had a long history of sickening abuse towards women,

but nobody had told Claire.

- George Appleton is a man of violence,

he's been convicted of harassing

a previous girlfriend, a partner,

he's known to have held a knife to a woman's throat,

he's been convicted of sexual assaults,

a thoroughly unsuitable man

to be a potential partner in your relationship.

And yet he is able to create multiple profiles

on internet dating sites and engage in conversation

with women like Claire, who are completely oblivious

to the sort of the man they're dealing with

and the sort of background he had.

- He'd met women through social media.

It was his thing, really,

it was how he sort of preyed on his victims,

and he was a bit of a loner,

he didn't really have that many friends,

and so social media really was his way

of making himself feel big, making himself feel like

the one that women wanted to be with,

and portraying himself as this lovable,

funny, kind, caring guy,

when really he was a nasty piece of work.

- George Appleton showed many characteristics

of being a psychopath.

The violence that he carried out on many victims,

and also the control he's got

when it comes to the verbal abuse.

He enjoyed that verbal abuse.

So with the two aspects,

with the verbal abuse and the violence,

these are characteristics of a psychopath.

- In the days after Claire's murder,

the manhunt took control of everything,

headlines, all media output,

it was leading all the main national headlines

as well as our local headlines.

Not only was the local community

in shock at the murder of a young mom on their doorstep,

but also the fact that the person

that police thought was responsible was out there.

When somebody's name's put out there with a picture,

all airports and the ports were all put on alert,

you'd think that the police would be able to find him,

and as the days went on

and there was no sign of George Appleton,

the panic in the community, you could feel it.

- [Narrator] Carol felt that terror more than most.

- While George was on the run,

I virtually stayed indoors all the time.

I never budged out the house.

I was just thinking he might've turned up here,

or I would've got threatened,

or he was gonna try and get in my house.

I locked all the windows

and we made sure that it was secure, the house.

Made sure that he couldn't get in.

And I had someone with me all the time.

If he's killed once, he'll do it again.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] On the 12th of February, 2009,

around 10 days after Claire's murder,

the press received another urgent bulletin from police.

- Another email drops through,

and that email said that police have found a body.

So really, you're looking at days on end,

days on end of this appeal,

this manhunt to find this murder suspect,

all that fear in the community, all those appeals,

all those warnings not to approach George Appleton,

and it ended, it ended here, right here in this pub,

this derelict pub where George Appleton hung himself.

- [Narrator] Despite the scale of the manhunt,

Appleton hadn't gone far.

The derelict pub where his body was found

was less than a mile from Claire's house.

- For the family, there was mixed emotions

'cause they were never gonna get that justice,

and I think that's what hit home with me

because when you have a murder investigation of this scale,

where you're actively looking for somebody

who has done something so horrific it's unimaginable,

you want to see them be brought to justice,

you want to see them being taken to court

and to be sent to prison,

and unfortunately for Claire's family,

they were never gonna get that.

- The police phoned me and said the commotion was over

and they had found his body,

and bless him for as much as a man as he was,

he couldn't have faced the punishment

that was coming to him.

- Appleton's suicide could've been a way

of getting out of going to prison

if he knew that he'd failed to cover his tracks.

He may not have wanted to go to prison as a sex offender.

He'd been to prison before, so he knew how sex offenders

may get treated in the prison system.

Appleton's suicide could've also been

a way of him having the final say,

him determining and maintaining control

of how the story ended.

- Not a day goes by that I don't miss her.

I would go through comments on media sites

and just floods memories back.

December the 17th, 2008.

Claire's "looking forward to seeing her brother."

(Adam sighs)

Always hurts, always hurts.

You don't realize how much.

You think you're getting over it,

and then you read it again.

- The fact that he was dead, of course,

meant that he couldn't be charged with the murder,

and that's an element of frustration

for everybody concerned in that,

because from the point of view of the police officers,

it's kind of a slightly unsatisfactory

ending to your investigation.

(tense music)

- [Narrator] But Claire's story was not to end here.

- Weeks before Miss Wood's body was found,

she'd gone to police to tell them

that she feared for her safety

and to make an allegation of assault against a man.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission

is due to look into the contact

Greater Manchester Police had with her

in the weeks prior to her death.

- The hunt for George Appleton,

that ended here in this pub,

but it was also a new chapter in terms of

the investigation into what went wrong,

why was Claire murdered, why,

when police knew about the fears that she had,

did she end up dead?

- [Narrator] Detective Superintendent Phil Owen

assisted Greater Manchester Police with the inquest.

- Normally when someone is murdered,

there's a criminal trial,

but because our prime suspect,

and our only suspect in the investigation,

George Appleton, had killed himself,

there therefore needed to be an inquest.

That inquest was held in Bolton in May, 2011.

- [Narrator] During the course of that inquest,

it emerged that the police knew that Appleton

had previous convictions for domestic violence,

but they had been unable to warn Claire

because of data protection rules.

- Clearly the person responsible

for Claire's death is George Appleton,

but I think individuals and collective organizations

may look back on the incident to say,

"Maybe we could've done more,

"maybe we couldn't done more

"to protect Claire and keep her safe."

(somber music)

- [Narrator] A separate

Independent Police Complaints Commission investigation

concluded that more could and should have been done

to provide Claire with the support

and protection she needed, but it cannot be said

the failures by Greater Manchester Police

or individual officers led to her death.

- To suddenly start hearing those details

of the situation Claire was in,

the fact that the agencies and the authorities

that were meant to be responsible

for looking after us and Claire

didn't and had failed Claire,

it was shocking, it was really shocking.

- I was appalled it would happen to my daughter.

I asked why my daughter hadn't been told

and they said data protection.

Did my daughter die because somebody couldn't tell her?

And if that was the case, I was shocked.

Why couldn't my daughter have been

told that this man was violent?

- [Reporter] A hard-hitting

Key 103 domestic violence campaign's

uncovering fears that the number of victims

in our region could be through the roof.

It's believed around 65,000 people

reported domestic abuse to the police

in our region last year.

As more and more women seek help,

we're calling on the government

to grant them the right to know

if their partner has a history of violence.

It follows the murder of Claire Wood

at the hands of her ex-boyfriend.

- [Narrator] Claire's father helped begin

a campaign to make lawmakers take notice

of what had been discovered over the course of the inquest.

- He was very successful in persuading

the lawmakers that there ought to be a right

for people to know the past of people

with whom they're starting a relationship,

and equally there ought to be a right

available to the police to disclose that information.

And it was well-supported by lawyers,

by charities and interest groups, and also in Parliament.

- [Narrator] Michael worked closely

with Journalist Michelle Livesey

to persuade lawmakers at Westminster of the need for change.

- I as a journalist felt that it was my responsibility,

and that I had an opportunity and I had a duty

to use my position to make sure she didn't die in vain

and make sure that other women

didn't suffer the same fate that she did.

- [Narrator] Claire's Law came into force

across England and Wales in 2014.

- It now allows individuals who are victims

or believe they're victims of some sort of abuse,

they can go to the authorities

and ask for information about their partner.

I know that within the first 10 months,

there were 1500 applications.

That alone shows that it's something

that should've been around for some time.

- [Narrator] Claire's relationship with Appleton

raises many issues about the nature of online dating.

- Clearly I think there are individuals

using social media and using the online world

to exploit vulnerable victims

and to go out and target

and purport to be who they're not.

And therefore that presents them

with enormous opportunities to exploit,

to embellish, to engender themselves to individuals,

before they ever meet face-to-face.

- The online world, the internet and social media,

has allowed people to meet, interact,

and communicate far more than ever.

That automatically means it will facilitate

any online offender because they can have

that constant contact 24/7,

which allows for 24/7 control,

and that's the issue we have here

with all these very sad cases

of individual offenders who have then gone on

to murder or sexually abuse.

We know it's a lot about control,

and that's what the internet affords.

(somber music)

- [Narrator] For Adam, Claire's law marks

a new chapter in his relationship with dad, Michael.

- I feel like I've gotten closer to my dad

since this has all happened,

and as he said, I think age and realization

and having a child myself,

it just naturally pulls you closer.

I'm not gonna let my dad miss out on my daughter,

no, I'm gonna take every opportunity

that comes to her for her to see him.

And as he said, you never know what's gonna happen.

- I didn't set out with lofty ambitions to save the world,

but to do away with domestic violence.

They say, "Did you do it for your daughter?"

No, I didn't.

I couldn't do it for my daughter.

My daughter was already gone and suffered in her going.

I wanted to make sure that girls in the future

didn't have to go through what my daughter went through.

(somber music)