Stalking is a control and power over someone, like domestic violence. The National Institute of Justice defines stalking as “a course of conduct directed at a specific person that involves repeated (two or more occasions) visual or physical proximity, nonconsensual communication, or verbal, written, or implied threats, or a combination thereof, that would cause a reasonable person fear.” One in six woman and one in nineteen men have been stalked. Stalking holds an unhealthy interest or morbid fascination with victim.
Examples of Stalking Behavior
Stalking behaviors may have the following action associated with the crime:
• Unwanted items are passed to the victim from the suspect. These can range from the bizarre to the romantic.
• Surveillance – the victim is followed. More harrowing is when the stalker lays in wait for the victim.
• Threats to the victim and or their property.
• Character defamation or harassment, including electronically over the internet. Person information is posted, and rumors spread about the victim.
• Only about 1 in 8 are victims of a stranger stalker. Most are stalked by former intimate partners or acquaintances.
Cyber Stalking
Cyberstalking is the use of electronic technologies to stalk their victims. It is the pursuit, harassment or unsolicited contact via social media or email. Alternatively, the stalker may assume the identity of their victim and use it to spread rumors or represent the victim in chat rooms and other social media sites.
Stalker Facts
Some interesting facts on stalkers:
• The average stalker is younger than their victims.
• Prior relationships run the gamut from ex-spouse, former live-in partners, former serious and intimate dating partners to casual dating. Many, as high as 66% suffered from domestic violence in their prior relationship to the victim.
• Most staling run about 12 mounts, with one incident lasting 38 years.
• Impact on the victims affect their physical well being as well as their mental health. Weight loss, insomnia, disturbed sleep, nightmares, depression, anxiety attacks, memory loss. They felt anger, fear and helplessness. Many had to move, lost employment or suffered property loss or damage.
• Loss of leaving an intimate partner and relative scarcity of assistance or ineffective discouragement of the stalker.
Stalking is a Crime of Criminal Harassment
Stalking, as it occurs with the victimization of a woman more often than a male, has attracted researchers in studies of the violence against women. If you consider the above-mentioned characteristics of stalking crimes, it appears that stalking crimes are an extension of primarily domestic violence crimes. It is a continuation of the control of the stalker over his victim. It is a question of power and dominance for the stalker and the effect is debilitating for the victim. For law enforcement the victim must document at least two incidents for the authorities to move on to investigation. Research has shown that over half of the victims of rape, physical assault or stalked where victimized by formal intimate partners. Rape and assault have been determined to be crimes meant to be controlling and making the victim subservient to the perpetrator’s whim.
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