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behaviour
This page considers stalking behaviour.
It covers -
introduction
As the preceding page noted, stalking involves recurrent
harassment: a course of conduct that extends over a period
of time rather than a single incident or action. That
period might be a few weeks or several years. It might
feature intensive or intermittent activity by the stalker.
From the victim's perspective stalking may be perceived
as a sequence of discrete acts, "each one building
upon the next", sometimes in a way that becomes more
threatening (for example more violent and less lawful)
as time passes.
Initial annoying, albeit lawful behaviour, may accordingly
culminate in crimes such as physical assault, destruction
of property, defamation or rape.
multiple aspects
Stalkers typically subject their targets to several forms
of harassment, including recurrent contact, threats, defamatory
statements, damage to property and assaults.
Stalkers endeavour to engage with their targets in different
ways, including visual sightings, the post
and telecommunications. Many stalkers make recurrent unsolicited
telephone calls to their victims, often at times that
are inconvenient (eg in the workplace) or that are innately
annoying or stressful (eg before dawn). In some instances
the stalker voices declarations of love, obscenities or
threats. In other instances the harasser remains silent,
engages in 'heavy breathing' or hangs up. The number of
calls can be very large, with some extreme instances overseas
featuring several hundred calls per week.
Victims have accordingly sometimes complained of "virtual
imprisonment", being forced to change their number
(sometimes repeatedly, after the stalker for example illicitly
obtains account details), to go ex-directory,
to screen all calls and to endure messages left on answering
machines.
Being deprived of relaxed access to telecommunications
can, for many people, seriously erode their quality of
life or earning power. Given that email
and SMS are now a
key communication mechanisms for many people (and are
often perceived as offering some anonymity or merely distance),
stalkers often send unwanted electronic messages.
Stalkers may also send facsimile messages - often featuring
offensive content - to personal or workplace machines.
Others use greeting cards or even postcards, the latter
apparently with the expectation that the target's family
or associates will encounter the messages. Some stalkers
will persistently send or leave 'gifts' - ranging from
flowers and lingerie through to excrement, used condoms,
disembowelled dolls or dead rats - whether as a quite
unwanted token of affection or to menace the victim.
Direct approaches to a target (at home, in the workplace,
while shopping, on public transport, during recreation
or at school) are common. Those approaches may feature
threats or personal invective. They may also feature scurrilous
comments intended for the ears of bypassers and associates.
Many stalkers harass their target by overt or covert surveillance,
including shadowing them in the street or recurrently
loitering near the victim's workplace/residence so that
the victim experiences a sense of being stalked like a
animal. In some instances, the stalker ostentatiously
signals awareness of the target's routines and associates
in order to ensure the victim is conscious of being watched
and heighten perceptions of threat.
Some stalkers trespass on the victim's property (or that
of family, employer or associates), sometimes on a forcible
basis. Some steal property that ranges from letters to
underwear. Others gain unauthorised access to personal
computers and internet accounts. That access can provide
information that aids the harassment; if disclosed to
the target through a phone call, face to face comment,
chatroom comment or email it can also reinforce a victim's
sense of vulnerability or offence.
Surveillance is often associated with other forms of harassment.
Incidents thus feature -
- disclosure
of intimate information, correct or otherwise, about
a victim to that person's associates or strangers (including
identity theft through
publishing information in online fora in the guise of
the victim)
-
unauthorised ordering of goods/services
- unauthorised
purchase of goods/services (eg by misusing the target's
credit card)
- making
false accusations to authorities and associates or even
launching malicious legal action.
Some
stalkers have resorted to mutilating the victim's pet
or livestock, either to cause distress through loss of
a companion or as a warning that 'you are next'.
Threats are common, whether to reinforce the stalker's
sense of power, to cause fear and pain or merely to force
a victim to comply with demands. Such threats - and action
- may involve violence to the victim, to a partner, colleague,
child or pet. They may instead involve harassment through
forms of blackmail, with the stalker for example threatening
suicide (sometimes suicide after murder of an ex-partner's
children or parents). Media coverage appears to have resulted
in several generations of incidents in which a stalker
falsely informed an ex-partner or associate that the person
had been infected with syphillis, gonorrhea or HIV.
Damage to property is common, with stalkers for example
slashing tyres, scratching paintwork or vandalising the
homes/offices of victims and their associates.
pathologies
Categorisation of stalker - and cyberstalker - pathologies
has become a minor art form for nonspecialists and even
some medical practitioners, with writers referring for
example to borderline erotomanics, sociopathic stalkers,
delusional erotomanics, 'former intimate' (aka 'simple
obsessional') stalkers, those with false victimisation
syndromes or to "the narcissist, the doper, the delusional,
the Bi-Polar".
Stalkers
may seek to stay within the bounds of criminal law in
order to avoid arrest and prosecution. They may therefore
engage in behaviour that is apparently harmless and entirely
lawful when viewed in isolation. Others may use what are
clearly unlawful means to harass their victim.
The Hong Kong Law Reform Committee report sensibly comments
that
Not
all stalkers are mentally ill. Stalkers may or may not
have mental problems.
and
notes that
It
has been said that stalkers range from cold-blooded
killers to lovesick teens, exhibiting a variety of psychological
syndromes such as paranoia, erotomania, schizophrenia
and manic depression. While some have a small degree
of mental and emotional illness, others are suffering
from a serious psychological syndrome or mental breakdown.
They come from all walks of life and socio-economic
backgrounds. A stalker can be an ex-lover, ex-spouse,
rejected suitor, colleague, ex-employee, neighbour,
gang member, disgruntled defendant or aggrieved customer
of his or her victim The motivation of a stalker ranges
from obsession, jealousy, and desires for contact and
control.
Stalking
may be motivated by an intense (albeit often quite undesired)
affection for the victim, by some sense of identification
with the target or by a visceral hatred of the individual.
Some stalkers are socially marginal; others occupy prominent
positions in the community. Some exhibit a disorder such
as obsessive-compulsive behaviour that could inhibit their
ability to hold a steady job or maintain a stable relationship.
They spend much time following their targets and writing
notes and letters to them. Some experience low self-esteem,
are jealous of a partner, lack constructive expression
of feelings, have a negative outlook on life and have
a perceived lack of control in their own lives.
'Former intimate' stalkers - sometimes labelled as ex-partners
who refuse "to let go" (or to be rejected) -
supposedly account for around 70 to 80% of stalking cases.
Typically they have had some personal or romantic relationship
with the victim in contrast to erotomanic and borderline
erotomanic stalkers. They engage in harassment when that
relationship crumbles, whether in a misplaced attempt
to resurrect the intimacy or to seek revenge.
Pathologists typically characterise such stalkers as emotionally
dependent, with high levels of insecurity being reflected
in a drive to control former partners and associates as
personal possessions. That is reflected in irrational
suspicion and jealousy about real or imagined infidelities.
As a consequence, they demonstrate a strong urge to control
their former partners. They may target the victim's current
partner - or perceived partner - in an attempt to remove
what they perceive to be the obstacle to reunion. Some
seek to coerce their target, a common feature of domestic
violence cases. In extreme cases, the stalker would rather
kill the victim than live without that person. Supposedly
around 30% of threat-making former intimate stalkers follow
through with physical violence.
Sociopathic stalkers, beloved by Hollywood and crime novelists,
do not seek to initiate or maintain an interpersonal relationship
with their victim. Their behaviour is a common characteristic
of serial rapists and serial murderers. Sociopathic stalkers
typically formulate the characteristics of an 'ideal victim'
before seeking individuals who fit the criteria, often
stalking one victim after another. It is claimed that
sociopathic stalkers were often abused during their early
years and that they displace their anger onto their victims
when they experience rejection as an adult or are unable
to control their environment.
Delusional
erotomanics typically fantasise the existence of an idyllic
romantic relationship with someone of a higher social
status and will often assume that intimacy with their
victims is being thwarted by third parties. Despite the
absence of an actual relationship or emotional reciprocity
- the target may indeed be unaware of the stalker's identity
- the erotomanic believes that the victim will fully return
the affection if given an opportunity. Some stalkers thus
believe that their targets are sending them coded confirmations
of deep affection, with trivial actions thus gaining an
unintended significance.
Some of the more generous observers have thus commented
that the stalking may benign, as the stalker seeks to
establish a relationship with the victim rather than to
engender fear. Other observers have noted that the stalker's
intentions are of less concern than their impact on the
stalked.
Borderline erotomanics, sometimes tagged as 'love obsessionals',
are individuals who have developed intense emotional feelings
towards other individuals who they acknowledge do not
reciprocate their feelings. They are thus different to
delusional erotomanics who mistakenly believe there is
some reciprocation of their feelings. They are often profoundly
vulnerable to the victim's trivial expressions of warmth
or openness and may oscillate between strong feelings
of love and hate, demonstrating "narcissistic or
abandonment rage" when the victims does not return
their emotional investment.
Emulatory or 'false victimisation syndrome' stalkers -
often of the same gender as their victims - supposedly
admire their targets. Proponents of the classification
argue that such stalkers typically have low self-esteem,
feel markedly inferior to the target and may go to great
lengths to imitate the victim's habits, lifestyle and
even appearance. Such emulation often is not fulfilling
and the stalker accordingly seeks revenge after perceived
rejection or merely the absence of the good things of
life that are the stalker's 'due'. That revenge is thereafter
rationalised by claims that the target is at fault, indeed
is persecuting the stalker, and that physical violence
or other action by the stalker is either justice or in
self-defence.
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