Stalking
What is stalking? Stalking is a pattern of repeated, unwanted attention, harassment, and contact. It is a course of conduct that can include:
- Following or laying in wait for the victim
- Repeated unwanted, intrusive, and frightening communications from the perpetrator by phone, mail, and/or e-mail
- Damaging the victim's property
- Making direct or indirect threats to harm the victim, the victim's children, relatives, friends, or pets
- Repeatedly sending the victim unwanted gifts
- Harassment through the Internet, known as cyberstalking, online stalking, or Internet stalking
- Securing personal information about the victim by: accessing public records (land records, phone listings, driver or voter registration), using Internet search services, hiring private investigators, contacting friends, family, work, or neighbors, going through the victim's garbage, following the victim, etc.
Legal Definitions
Legal definitions vary but many states define stalking as willful, malicious, and repeated following and harassment.
- Isolated acts may not fall under this type of law, but where there is a pattern, the behavior is generally illegal.
- In some states, for stalking laws to apply, the commission of the offense requires an explicit threat of violence against the victim, but elsewhere an implied threat is sufficient.
- Under most state laws, Montana's included, the victim's fearful response is built into the legal definition of stalking. This recognizes that the perpetrator's repeated, uninvited pursuit of the victim is by its nature frightening and threatening.
If you are being stalked or know someone who is, click here for more information about what victims can do to protect themselves and get help.
Is the threatening nature of stalking always apparent?
- To an outsider, the stalker's behavior can appear friendly and unthreatening, for example, showering the victim with gifts or flattering messages. But, these acts are intrusive and frightening if they are unwelcome to the victim.
- Whatever means stalkers use, stalking induces fear and disrupts the lives of victims.
How Prevalent Is Stalking?
- Roughly 1 million American women and 400,000 American men in the United States are stalked annually. [1]
- More than 8 million women (8 percent) and 2 million men (2 percent) will be stalked at some point during their lives. [2]
- Stalking lasts, on average, nearly two years according to victim reports
- One study showed 25 percent of victims took time from work to deal with a stalking problem. [3]
Who are the victims of stalking?
- The overwhelming majority of victims (78 percent) are women.
- Most female victims are stalked by current or former intimate partners such as spouses, cohabiting partners, or dating partners. [4]
- A minority of victims are stalked by strangers.
Who are the perpetrators?
- Nearly 90 percent of stalkers are men.
- Stalkers can be strangers, acquaintances, friends, co-workers, or current or former intimate partners, including spouses, boyfriends/girlfriends, and dates.
- Current or former intimate partners stalk the majority of female victims.
- A minority of stalkers target victims with whom they have no prior connection or relationship.
- Stalkers are often socially maladjusted, emotionally immature, insecure and jealous by nature. Like perpetrators of domestic violence, who often stalk their partners, they seek to exert power and control over the victim.
- The majority of stalkers are not mentally ill. A minority (usually stranger stalkers) suffer from mental health disorders (such as paranoid schizophrenia or manic depression) and exhibit delusional thought patterns or behaviors.
Is stalking dangerous?
- Stalking can lead to physical violence resulting in serious injury or even death.
- It's often difficult to predict when and how a stalker will act or whether the unwanted intrusions into the victim's life will escalate into physical or sexual assaults. [5]
- Some stalkers never move beyond threats and intimidation, while others do so with little warning.
- Victims may not know if action they take will stop the stalking or make things worse.
- Stalking is unpredictable. Victims should talk to trained victim assistance professionals about ways to improve their safety, their options, and resources available to help them and important to report stalking behavior to law enforcement.
How are stalking and domestic violence linked?
- Many domestic violence victims report being stalked by current or former intimate partners, particularly towards the end of the relationship.
- Perpetrators of domestic violence often engage in stalking, repeatedly harassing victims by phoning them, following them, threatening them, or sending them gifts and notes.
- Stalking is one way perpetrators of domestic violence monitor and control their victims. Their behavior often escalates as they feel their power and authority slipping away.
- Current or former partners are particularly dangerous stalkers, committing 30 percent of all homicides against women. [6]
What is the impact of stalking on victims?Individual responses may vary, but commonly include:
Fear: of what the stalker will do next, of leaving the house, of the dark, of the phone ringing
Anxiety: about the unknown consequences, the safety of family members or pets, what the future holds, whether the stalking will ever end, how other people will respond if they find out what's happening
Vulnerability: feeling totally exposed, never feeling safe, not knowing who to trust or where to turn for help
Nervousness: feeling anxious, fearful, jumpy, irritable, impatient, on edge, getting startled by small things
Depression: feeling despair, hopelessness, overwhelmed with emotion, tearful, angry
Hypervigilance: being continually alert to known and unknown dangers, taking elaborate safety measures against the perpetrator or any suspicious people, repeatedly re-checking locks and bolts on doors and windows
Stress: having difficulty concentrating, forgetting things, feeling generally distracted and worried
Stress-related physical symptoms: such as headaches and stomach aches
Eating problems: not feeling hungry, forgetting to eat, eating all the time
Flashbacks or intrusive memories: reliving frightening incidents, not being able to break away from disturbing thoughts, feelings, and memories
Sleeping problems: nightmares, interrupted sleep patterns, not being able to fall asleep, wanting to sleep all the time
Isolation: feeling disconnected from family or friends, feeling no one understands
Use of alcohol or drugs: to numb fear and anxiety triggered by stalking incidents, to induce calm and sleep
What kind of obstacles can prevent victims from seeking help?
-Fears about how the stalker will respond
-Threats by the stalker
-Limited options for relocation to safer housing
-Language barriers
-Limited accessibility of victim assistance programs
-Belief that no one can or will help
-Fears about the consequences of seeking help (how others will respond)
What if a person is being stalked by a law enforcement officer? Victims stalked by law enforcement officers are among those facing special difficulties.
- Law enforcement officers are in a powerful position to harm victims and prevent them getting assistance.
- Victims may be especially afraid because they know for certain that their stalkers have legal access to firearms and other weapons.
- Victims may know or fear their complaints will not be taken seriously because of the identity of the perpetrator.
- Victims may feel anxious or uncomfortable making a complaint to police or prosecutors, especially in small communities.
- Victims of same-sex relationship stalking (i.e., gay, lesbian, bi-sexual or transgender victims) also face special problems, and are confronted by a different set of issues. The consequences of reporting may make these victims vulnerable in ways that don't apply to other victims. They may risk being "outed" to unsupportive or hostile families, friends, employers, work colleagues, and communities. In some jurisdictions, a complaint to police may risk criminal charges against the victim, since same-sex activities are still illegal in some places.
More information
For more information on stalking, the National Center for Victims of Crime has established a National Stalking Resource Center.
If you are being stalked or know someone who is, click here for more information about what victims can do to protect themselves and get help.
References
1. National Institute of Justice.(1997, November) The Crime of Stalking: How Big is the Problem? Bulletin, citing The National Violence Against Women Survey.
Stalking and Domestic Violence (1998), supra. National Institute of Justice/Centers For Disease Control and Prevention report , Extent, Nature and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence (NIJ/CDC research report, July 2000)
2. Stalking: Lessons from Recent Research, Address by Jeremy Travis, Director, National Institute of Justice, to National Center for Women and Policing Conference, Orlando, FL, April 14, 1999.
3. The term intimate partner is generally defined to include current or former spouses, co-habitants of the same or opposite sex, and current or former boyfriends or girlfriends.
It has been estimated that stalkers are violent between 25percent and 35percent of the time. The group most likely to be violent is made up of stalkers who are current or former intimates. See Stalking and Domestic Violence (1998) supra, page 2.
4. Federal Bureau of Investigation , Uniform Crime Report, 1998.
5. Evidence suggests both that victims are more likely to be satisfied with the way their cases are handled if perpetrators are arrested and that some believe informal warnings are more effective than arrests in halting the stalking. See Stalking and Domestic Violence, supra, pages 16 and 21.
6. Ibid.
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