The Crime of Stalking

The Crime of Stalking

Stalking: I have been a researcher for more than 25 years, both as a detective and as a private investigator. I have dealt with cases of just about any kind of criminal and civil (tort) violation that occurs in this country. The only criminal case that frightened me of the victim is stalking more than any other.

Who are the victims? Anyone can fall victim to a stalker. It is often a former spouse or partner. It is often a public figure or celebrity, a child or an informal acquaintance or a complete stranger.

Stalking is defined by Colorado State Statute 18-9-111 Bullying-Stalking (4) (b), such as subsection III, states that if a person repeatedly follows, approaches, contacts, is supervised or makes any form of communication with another person, a member of that person's immediate family, or someone with whom that person has or has had a relationship in a way that can cause a reasonable person severe emotional stress and causes that person, a member of his family, or the person who the relationship had to suffer severe emotional distress, stalks.

o Survivors, Inc. has published some very worrying statistics about this crime;

o 1,006,970 women and 370,990 men are stalked annually in the United States

o 1 in 12 women and 1 in 45 men are stalked during their lifetime

o 81% of women stalked by a current or former intimate partner have been physically attacked by that partner.

o The average duration of a stalking is 1.8 years, but increases to 2.2 years with an intimate partner.

o 87% of all stalkers are men. 2/3 of the stalkers chase their victim (s) at least once a week, many daily, using more than one method.

o 78% use more than one approach to the victim and weapons are used in 1 of 5 cases.

o And perhaps the most disturbing thing about a stalker is that 1/3 of all stalkers are serial offenders.

One of the most disturbing aspects for a woman being stalked by a previous intimate partner is that; 54% of the victims, who were murdered by the stalker, had reported to the police.

The case I am most familiar with happened in 2002 and began in the Auraria Campus Bookstore: Pam, not her real name, was shopping for her mandatory books before the fall semester began. As she walked through the store, she noticed that a man was following her. First she rationalized that he wasn't really following her, but that he was just following her, doing his own shopping. When she was waiting in line to pay for her purchases, she saw this man staring at the front exit. She described her reaction: "The hair was on my arms and I saw his eyes. His eyes never blinked."

What does the study say about stalking happening on college campuses: according to a report from the California State University Department of Police Services, Northridge: 13% of college women were stalked during the 6-9 month period of the study. 80% of the victims knew their stalkers (leaving 20% ​​behind strangers) and 30% reported being emotionally or psychologically injured. Pam left the store, walked past the man who didn't seem to see her leave, and went home. She had no reason to believe that her life was about to change.

In the weeks that followed Pam became involved in her class work and forgot about the incident in the bookstore. One evening, about a month after the first event, Pam and her friend Fred, not even his real name, were shopping at their local market. As Pam walked down the aisles and filled her cart, she felt that someone was watching her. She became alert and saw the people moving around her. At the end of her aisle, she saw the same man who had followed her in the campus bookstore. He stared at her again. Pam went looking for Fred. When she found Fred, she told him what had happened. The two of them spent a few minutes at the market on the missing man. They left the market and promised each other that they would be very careful.

Pam continued her lessons but was always looking for the man who scared her. The psychological terror documented in the Northridge Study was started for Pam.

Midweek Pam got out of her bus and got ready to walk home when she saw the same man standing across the street, astride a bicycle, staring at her. Pam panicked and started running home. As she ran, she began to think that going home was not a good idea. The man could follow her and learn where she lived. In reality, the man had almost certainly followed her home in the days before he showed himself at the bus stop. So she walked in a random pattern until she was sure he was no longer following her. She admitted to me much later that she had never looked back to see if she was being followed. She was too afraid of what she would see. Pam told Fred what had happened and drew him in fear. He was afraid to let Pam out of sight. They changed their daily routines.

A few weeks passed quietly. Pam and Fred began to relax and even hoped the man had decided to leave her alone. One evening, when Pam was driving home by bus, she happened to look out the window and saw the man riding the bus by bike. She decided not to leave the bus at her normal stop. She drove until she no longer saw the man.

On their next trip to the market, Fred and Pam stayed together. Pam saw the man again at the entrance to her aisle. She pointed him to Fred who decided to talk to the man. Fred approached the man and started telling him very loudly that he had to stay away from Pam. The man simply denied that he knew what Fred was talking about. Fred decided to get Pam and leave before he became the subject of a phone call to the police.

Fred and Pam decided to move to another part of the city. According to Survivors, Inc. approximately 11% of the stalking victims move, often to other cities. They hoped the movement would throw the man off their path. Once in their new Capital Hill apartment, the couple began to feel safer. The man was nowhere to be seen in recent weeks, and Pam increasingly went out alone.

She was shopping at Cherry Creek Mall and went to a pharmacy nearby there. While she was shopping, she happened to look up and see the man. He was talking to the clerk at the counter. Panicky Pam fled the store. As she ran past the man, he grabbed her and started the fight! He told her that he was shop security and had witnessed her stealing. He went so far as to try to fascinate her. Pam fought so hard that someone in the crowd shouted 9-1-1 and the police were called. Before the police arrived, an out of service officer stopped but in uniform to see what was happening. The man who saw the police dropped his handcuffs and fled. Pam ran to the officer and told him what had happened.

An investigation into the incident was conducted by uniformed officers and it was determined that Pam's attacker was not a company employee. Pam did a police report for the attack and attempted abduction and it was assigned to a detective for investigation.

A few days later, the man, now a suspect, approached a construction team near Pam and Fred's apartment and asked to borrow a ladder. He told the foreman of the crew that he had locked himself out of his third floor apartment. The foreman let him borrow the ladder, but thought about it better and called the police.

The man was caught and identified. He was arrested and charged with harassment / stalking. The case was assigned to me and I interviewed the suspect. He was identified as Michael Murphy, not his real name, and was interviewed. He had the strange habit of verbally answering a question and at the same time shaking his head or nodding in the opposite reaction.

It was determined that Michael, a white man in his twenties, came from Boston. He had lived there with his parents, who were professors at Harvard College. I contacted his father and heard that Michael had been in trouble in Boston because he "reportedly" stalked a college. The college and his parents thought it best that Michael moved to Denver and stayed with his aunt.

While I was talking to Michael, he revealed that he was only following women to protect them. He felt that the women he "protected" were in dangerous relationships and needed him to "keep an eye on them." He could not understand that what he was doing was wrong. Michael was tried and found guilty of intimidation / stalking and sentenced accordingly.

Why did Michael chase Pam? A study conducted by the aardvark (Help with abuse, rape and domestic violence and collection of resources) showed that there was a clear link between stalking and other emotionally controlling and physically offensive behavior. Most of the perpetrators were men with control problems. The investigation also found that the perpetrators destroyed the property of the victim about 30% of the time and even killed their pets, about 10% of the time. The National Violence Against Women (NVAW) Survey, co-sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Disease Control, conducted a telephone survey among 8,000 women and another 8,000 men. Through this research they have established that 8% of all women and 2% of all men in this country are victims of stalking. Until then, health care providers had estimated that perhaps 200,000 people were stalking a year. The survey continued with the prediction of offender profiles. They found the following:

Serious parental discipline, anxious attachment and the need to control the partner formed a cluster of predictive indicators for stalking. A study of stalkers by Rosenfeld, "Recidivism in Stalking and Obsessional Intassment" (2003) and published in the Journal of Law and Human Behavior, showed that 50% of stalkers reoffend.

The National Center for Victims of Crime stated that all too often victims do not fully appreciate the danger of being stalked. There is no clear course for a victim to follow. Protection orders were obtained by 28% of women and 10% of men who were victims. 69% of the orders that the women obtained and 81% of the orders that the men had violated! Almost half of the victims tried to avoid the stalker in vain. Others always tried to travel with companions; number recognition; security systems for their homes; and guidance. This tactic had very little impact on the perpetrator.

There are laws against stalking in all 50 states; 15 states classify stalking as a crime in the first infringement and 34 states classify it as a crime in the second infringement. In the remaining state it is a crime. With all these laws there is no direct influence on the number of stalking victims in this country. The statistics remain virtually the same from year to year.

What should you do if you notice that you are the victim of a stalker?

o Call the police and make a report. Document the facts and give the best description you can give.

o Tell friends and family what's going on and ask them for support.

o Be alert to your environment, who is nearby and what they do

o Remember that if you are stalked, the offender has the upper hand. He can follow you from any location to another location and ultimately knows as much about your actions as you do. Once you realize that you are being stalked, it is too late to try to use evasive actions to try and lose the stalker.

o Get a restraining order or protection order, even if they are violated so often. It is a way to show the emotional distress that is needed as part of the crime.