The foundations of the CTAP lie in the work of the Fixated Research Group which was commissioned in 2003 by the U.K.’s Home Office to investigate the risk posed to the British royal family and politicians by individuals who wrote inappropriate, bizarre or threatening letters to its members, or attempted to approach them by gaining entry to their places of residence or breaching security cordons at public events.
Early experience in the private sector indicated that risk managers tended to rely heavily on experience and gut-feel when it came to the initial threat assessment of concerning online and offline communication and contact. This was the catalyst for the development of the CTAP in its current form: the need for a structured professional judgement tool to help perform this threat assessment role, whilst at the same time remaining relevant to police settings. It needed to be a comprehensive and self-contained package, rather than a step in the operating protocol of a public-figure protection unit.
Dr. David James (MBBS, MA, FRCPsych) is a Senior Forensic Psychiatrist in the United Kingdom. He established the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre (FTAC), a unit within the Metropolitan Police Service, jointly staffed by police officers and psychiatric staff, which assesses and manages inappropriate attention or harassment towards senior U.K. politicians and members of the Royal Family. He is a co-author of the Stalking Risk Profile, the leading risk assessment instrument in stalking and harassment cases. David was the founding Clinical Director at Theseus Risk Management.
Dr. Rachel MacKenzie (BAppSci, Psych (Hons), DPsych, MAPS) was a Clinical Psychologist at the Victorian Institute of Mental Health (Forensicare) in Melbourne, Australia. An Associate Clinical Consultant at Theseus Risk Management, she currently operates a private and forensic practice specialising in the assessment and treatment of stalkers and their victims. Rachel is lead author of the Stalking Risk Profile.
Dr. Frank Farnham (MBBS, BSc, FRCPsych) is a Senior Forensic Psychiatrist in the United Kingdom. He is currently Clinical Director of the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, and Clinical Director of the National Stalking Clinic, a national resource within the U.K. for the assessment and management of stalkers. Frank is an Associate Clinical Consultant at Theseus Risk Management.
Theseus Risk Management was formed in the private sphere along the same principles as FTAC. Individuals and brands in the public eye use us to find solutions to threatening and obsessive quests, ‘causes’ and grudges. Legal, corporate and talent risk managers rely on us for authoritative fixated threat and risk assessment.
Our team incorporates internationally respected forensic psychiatrists and psychologists – medical specialists whose professional expertise concerns the interface between aberrant behaviour, mental disorder, and the law.
Theseus staff have published more than 100 research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and thirty chapters in specialist books, covering a wide range of topics concerning risk and threat evaluation and management; the interaction between mental illness, offending and the criminal justice system; harassment, stalking and threat; fixated threat management and lone-actor terrorism.
As well as authoring the CTAP-25, our team include co-authors of two other well-respected and validated risk assessment tools in the field of harassment, threats and stalking, namely:
The purpose, development and research behind the design of CTAP-25 in its current form is described in detail in:
James, D. V., Allen, P., Wolfe Murray, A., MacKenzie, R. D., Yang, J., De Silva, A., & Farnham, F. R. (2022). The CTAP, a threat assessment tool for the initial evaluation of concerning or threatening communications: Development and inter-rater reliability. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 9(3), 129–152. The abstract is available to read here.
As a means of establishing the validity of CTAP-25, Theseus conducted a study to explore its ability to distinguish between writers of concerning communications who went on to approach in the corporate sector, and those who did not, and secondly, the associations between CTAP items and persistence in concerning behaviour. The findings can be read in:
James, D. V., MacKenzie, R. D., Allen, P., Wolfe Murray, A., De Silva, A., Yang, J., & Farnham, F. R. (2023). Factors associated with approach and persistence in corporate threat assessment cases: The validity of the CTAP. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 10(1), 42–56. The abstract is available to read here.
Citations for James, David V, MacKenzie, R., & Farnham, F. R. (2014). Communications Threat Assessment Protocol. Theseus LLP.
