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cases
This page considers a range of online and offline stalking
incidents and prosecutions.
It covers -
introduction
The following cases illustrate the range of activities
encompassed by traditional stalking and its extension
into electronic networks. They indicate that, contrary
to claims by some theorists, stalking is not new: it is
instead often a very old activity with a new name.
They also illustrate that stalking – online or off
– may involve psychological disturbance, is not
merely a "nuisance", is not restricted to working
class males under 30 or disgruntled ex-spouses, and may
result in tangible physical/psychological harm.
poison pens
One reader of this site glibly commented that "sticks
and stones may break your bones but emails never hurt
you, so just hit the delete button". That advice
ignores the intention of some stalkers, which is to produce
discomfort, offence and fear.
It also ignores the potential association between the
message and physical violence or other action, with recipients
thus reasonably fearing for their lives or merely dreading
what the day's post and email may bring.
Henri-Georges Clouzot's superb 1943 film Le Corbeau
captured the anger and terror caused by poison pen letters
in a French provincial town, arsenic and anxiety behind
the aspidistras. It was echoed in arrest during 2005 of
a Cavaillon private school teacher for sending some 1,000
poison pen letters to neighbours and businessmen in the
Bouches-du-Rhône and Vaucluse. The offender, inspired
by "messages from God", recurrently informed
the men that their wives were being unfaithful. God supposedly
provided the names and addresses of the victims during
her nighttime visions, with the offender claiming not
know any of the recipients.
Contemporary Animal Liberation Front activist Janet Lawrence
wrote threatening letters to UK life sciences researchers
and technical staff. Some of those people had been assaulted
by other activists and experienced vandalisation of their
cars or homes. All were presumably aware of instances
were researchers had been killed or injured and would
accordingly suffer some distress on receiving a message
from Lawrence. All the letters were in red ink and featured
sentiments such as
You
are a sick, evil, perverted deviant. You are now a legitimate
and priority ALF target. The animal rights militia exists
just for filthy, animal-abusing scum like you. You have
been warned … Your life will be made a living
hell until you stop abusing animals for profit, you
evil, perverted scum
One
victim, among other workers who had only "vague and
tenuous" links to the Huntingdon Life Sciences' animal
testing laboratory, was so terrified that he hired a private
security company to protect his family.
In jailing Lawrence for eight months after she admitted
causing a public nuisance the Judge commented
You
are undoubtedly an intelligent woman with good qualifications
and wholly respectable in other parts of your life.
I think you lack insight into the effect these letters
would have on people.
Retired
lecturer James Forster was imprisoned in 2001 and ordered
to pay £3,000 prosecution costs after sending around
200 obscene and threatening letters that included threats
to put a bomb down an 88 year old neighbour's chimney
and repeated claims that the local accountant was a prostitute.
Forster sent letters inviting people to burgle the home
of one of his victims and mailed a pornographic magazine
to the 13 year old daughter of another victim who had
received threats of damage to her car if she failed to
resign as parish clerk.
celebrities and crazies
In 1996 Anthony Burstow became the first person to be
jailed in the UK for the crime of causing psychological
grievous bodily harm, having stalked Tracey Morgan over
at least four years. He had made threatening phone calls,
sent poison pen letters, lurked near her house, poured
oil on her car, covered her lawn with condoms, sent sanitary
towels in the post and broken into her home to plant bugs
in her bedroom.
He served half of a five year sentence, being released
under a restraining order that prevents him from entering
her county. Bizarrely, he later changed his name to that
of one of Morgan's ex-boyfriends, leading her to suggest
development of a national stalker register modelled on
the UK sex offender register.
Dr Joan Francisco was strangled at her London home on
Boxing Day 1994 after being stalked for five years by
her ex-boyfriend, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
In 1997 Clarence Morris was jailed for five years in the
UK for stalking London dental receptionist. He is reported
to have hammered on the windows of her practice and harassed
her with undesired love letters, flowers, champagne and
underwear. UK media figures such as news presenter Sarah
Lockett and Crimewatch presenter Jill Dando were
stalked by what were ironically characterised as fans;
Lockett's stalker was arrested after a year of harassment,
Dando was murdered.
In the US figures such as Barbra Streisand, Greta Garbo,
Andy Warhol, Gloria Swanson and Steven Spielberg have
been stalked: Spielberg for example gained legal protection
from a male stalker who planned to rape him. UK author
John Fowles was pursued by a deranged woman in harem pants
and fur coat.
In 2001 controversial 'cypherphunk' and tax
radical Jim Bell, author of the 1996 Assassination
Politics, was found guilty of stalking federal agents
after use of the net to research his targets and sending
a harassing message via fax. In a 1997 guilty plea Bell
admitted to stink-bombing the carpet outside an IRS office,
collecting the names of IRS agents and speculating about
anonymous digital payments for murdering government officials.
He subsequently claimed that he was coerced into signing
the plea.
The 2000 Hong Kong LRC report on stalking refers to a
complaint that an ex-colleague posted a victim's name
and mobile phone number on newsgroup, supposedly soliciting
sexual services. That resulted in numerous nuisance calls
and in a 'cease & desist' enforcement notice once
the offender was identified. A radio personality who had
been counselling her audience was reported to have been
harassed by threatening email and by placement of a doctored
photograph in the lonelyhearts section of a sex-related
site. She alerted HK police after the offender refused
to stop.
In Queensland during 2005 Anette Maree Hill pursued a
Toowoomba policeman over a five year period, before being
rewarded with a suspended 4.5 year prison sentence. She
had bombarded the married officer with love letters, poems,
cards and phone calls.
harassment online
As noted on the preceding page, lawmakers and network
administrators quickly acknowledged that the telegraph
and telephone systems could be used to threaten people,
accordingly adopting administrative protocols and legislation
such as the 1906 federal Crimes Act in Australia.
Incidents of cyberharassment were identified during the
Usenet era and gained increasing
attention from the mid 1990s onwards as much of the population
in advanced economies went online at home and in the workplace.
In 1985 for example a University of Michigan student was
charged with interstate transmission of a threat, after
writing a fictional account on a computer bulletin board
of raping and torturing a named classmate. That case was
thrown out after a US District Court ruled that the student
broke no federal law.
14 years later security guard Gary Dellapenta pleaded
guilty under Californian cyberstalking law over charges
of stalking, computer fraud and solicitation of sexual
assault. After his advances were rebuffed by a 28 year
old woman he met at church, he engaged in identity
fraud by posting ads in her name on AOL and other
sites that described his victim's supposed fantasies of
being gang-raped. When people responded, he impersonated
her in email and in chat rooms, revealing personal information
such as her address, her appearance, her phone number
and how to bypass her home security system. On at least
six occasions, sometimes in the middle of the night, men
knocked on the woman's door saying they wanted to rape
her.
In Queensland during 2000 email contact with a woman went
sour, with the victim receiving progressively more menancing
messages. She ultimately received death threats from the
offender, along with threats that she would be pack-raped
(with video being released on the net). In what is claimed
as the first Australian prosecution of 'cyberstalking'
the offender was sentenced over illegal use of a telecommunications
device.
In 2001 Manish Kathuria was arrested by the New Delhi
Police after impersonating Ritu Kohli on the MIRC chat
service. The arrest was claimed as India's first case
of cyberstalking, with Kathuria being charged under Section
509 of the Indian Penal Code for "outraging the modesty"
of his victim. Having appropriated her name he "used
obscene and obnoxious language", distributing her
home telephone number with invitations for callers to
"talk dirty".
A University of San Diego graduate student meanwhile terrorised
five female university students online over more than
a year. His victims, selected because he thought they
were laughing at him (although in fact they had never
met him), received hundreds of violent and threatening
email, sometimes up to five messages per day. In a separate
case a US Federal Court sentenced Eric Bowker to eight
years imprisonment for sending obscene emails and telephone
messages to reporter Tina Knight. Bowker had stolen Knight's
mail and continued to harass her after she moved interstate.
In 2003 a US woman sought protection after claiming that
someone had provided her personal information (including
her description and location) to men via an online dating
service. The victim discovered the identity theft
when she was contacted by a man who said they had arranged
a casual encounter through the Lavalife.com dating service.
Shortly thereafter she was contacted by a second man following
chat with 'her' about arranging a separate encounter.
She commented "You don't even have to own a computer
to be the victim of an Internet crime any more".
A year later a South Carolina man was sentenced to five
years of probation, 500 hours of community service and
US$12,000 restitution after pleading guilty to offences
under federal stalking law. He had admitted sending dozens
of email and fax messages to a Seattle city employee who
had broken up with him 14 years previously.
In 2003 the Supreme Court of Western Australia awarded
academic Dr Trevor Cullen $70,000 in compensatory damages
(and a further $25,000 exemplary damages) for defamatory
statements published by US resident Bill White during
a cyberstalking campaign that featured defamatory emails
and over 60 hate sites
hosted outside Australia. The case is discussed in more
detail elsewhere
on this site.
One observer commented that "the physical stalker
has to sleep sometime, but these guys never do".
Because the sites defame but do not physically threaten,
White's publishing activity does not breach US cyberstalking
enactments which would require removal by hosting
services.
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