She met him on Tinder and 20 minutes were enough to ruin her life: the story of Nadia and the “Scotland predator”

Nadiaa 34-year-old sports masseuse, met Christopher Harkins in 2018 via dating app Tinder.

After a few weeks of exchanging messages, she agreed to have dinner with him in Glasgow, Scotland. But when she arrived at her apartment she noticed the first warning signs: the man greeted her in sports clothes, said he was “too tired” to go out and suggested she stay home.

“The place was empty, no furniture, just a television leaning on boxes,” he told the BBC.

When he refused a shot of vodka and asked for a soda, Harkins completely changed his attitude: «He looked at me with contempt, started insulting me and shouting. That’s when I decided to leave.»

He thought it would all end there, but that brief encounter became the beginning of hell.

Stalked by a serial stalker

That same night, Harkins began flooding her with calls and messages. “How dare you stand me up?”was the first. Then came the threats: that he would set her house on fire, that he would kill her father, that he would make her suffer.

This is how «Chris» appeared on Tinder. Photo: BBC

For hours he insulted her, attacked her appearance and humiliated her. “I cried until dawn. It destroyed my self-esteem”Nadia recalled.

The next day he reported the harassment to the Scottish police, including a recording of him threatening to hit his father. However, the authorities did not act.

“They told me they couldn’t do anything. that it was not a direct threat. I screamed desperately, but they didn’t want to help me,» she said.

Years of impunity: how the police acted

A BBC investigation revealed that At least 11 women had tried to sue Harkins since 2012, for physical assault, fraud and abuse. However, the complaints were treated “as isolated cases”, as the Scottish police themselves acknowledged.

The woman was one of the man’s many accusers. Photo: BBC

Only in 2024, more than a decade after the first accusations, the predator was arrested.

During those years, Harkins scammed women in Scotland and London, obtaining more than 214,000 pounds sterling (about $282,000) through financial deception, false trips and stolen identities.

He was finally sentenced to 12 years in prison for 19 crimes against 10 women.

Nadia believes that the police could have prevented the suffering of many victims. «If they had listened to me, perhaps other women would not have gone through the same thing. One was raped just two months after my encounter with him»he lamented.

Chief Inspector Lyndsay Laird, responsible for the case, acknowledged to the BBC that the first reports were mishandled: «They were recorded in different divisions, at different times. It was not treated as a pattern of abuse.»

The predator was sentenced to prison. Photo: BBC

Although the police maintain that the protocols changed today, the victims demand formal apologies for the lack of action.

How is Nadia today?

Currently, Nadia is the mother of two daughters and he managed to rebuild his life. «I feel good. I’m a different person. I don’t ignore the warning signs anymore,» he said.

The story was shared by the protagonist on the BBC podcast Matched with a Predator.

The case of the predator, which adds more than 30 victims identifiedreopened the debate on the responsibility of dating platforms and the need for faster protocols in the face of complaints of digital and gender violence.