Last year, a man named Alex Gray broke into Lily Allen’s home in the middle of the night. After stalking the singer since 2009, Gray was finally convicted of harassment and burglary this month and is now awaiting sentencing. In a recent interview with The Observer, Allen recounted the details of the seven-year ordeal, discussing both the experience of being stalked and her dissatisfaction with the police investigation. And in an interview that aired tonight on the BBC’s Newsnight, she said she feels “victim-blamed,” “victim-shamed,” and “let down” by the police.

Gray first contacted Allen through social media in 2009, and soon started showing up at her home, her record label, and her sister’s shop to drop off abusive letters and suicide threats, which she immediately took to the police. When he showed up at one of her concerts, the police gave her a panic alarm, but they requested it back after a few months. After repeatedly begging officers to show her a picture of Gray, she was given a photograph to look at “for 30 seconds” before they took it away again. “I felt very alone,” she told The Observer. “I have some trust issues now, not least with the police. Who can you trust if you cannot trust institutions like the police?”

In October, when Gray broke into her bedroom after she had left a back door unlocked, she didn’t even recognize him. “I sat up and looked and the doorhandle was twisting round. This guy came steaming in and I didn’t know who he was,” she says. “I recoiled and he ripped the duvet off, calling me a ‘fucking bitch’ and yelling about where his dad is.” Eventually, a friend who happened to be there at the time was able to shove him out of the house. When she contacted the police, they told her that the intruder was probably just a drunk who had accidentally stumbled into the wrong apartment. She told them that she thought it could be the stalker, “But they were uncomfortable with the idea. Then I realised my handbag was missing and the change in atmosphere was palpable, it was like a sigh of relief: ‘now it’s burglary — we understand that.” It wasn’t until the burglary was reported that police started taking the case seriously, she says.

Gray was subsequently caught and arrested, but her troubles with the police weren’t over. When she wrote to them asking why the letters she had given them dating back to 2009 weren’t being used as evidence, she was told that they had been destroyed “according to police protocol.” “It was not special attention I looked for. It was reassurance and validation,” she told The Observer. The police made me feel like a nuisance, rather than a victim. I feel lucky I had resources to protect myself, I could move house, get a lawyer, but if you don’t have that money, how much more terrifying must it be?” She says she’s not angry at Alex Gray, because “He has a mental illness. The system has failed him.” But she does “want some answers from the police. I’m a famous person and had the inclination to push things. If they treat me like this, how the hell are they going to treat someone else without those resources, without clout?”

In a tearful new interview with BBC’s Newsnight, Allen says that a police officer contacted her after her interview with The Observer was published, suggesting that her “high profile” condemnation of the police might discourage other victims from coming forward. This is the email, which she read aloud during the BBC interview:

As you know, there have been press reports suggesting that you were dissatisfied with the response you received. Further, due to the high profile of this matter, I fear other victims of similar crimes may have read the story and now may not have the confidence in us to report such matters. As such, it is really important that I can understand what, if anything, went wrong during the investigation. I was saddened to hear of this report, so I would like to hear your views on what we could do better.

When asked what she thinks of the email, she said, “I think it’s victim-shaming and victim-blaming.” Allen is currently working with the Women’s Equality Party and the stalking advocacy service Paladin on a campaign to set up a register for serial stalkers and get specialist help for both perpetrators and victims. Watch a clip from her BBC interview below.