Rethinking Our Advice to Stalking Victims
The Stalking Resource Center is always looking for the best, most up-to-date advice to give stalking victims. We subscribe to many journals and newsletters, and we read books on stalking. As we talk to practitioners in the field, we learn more about this crime and what can be done to help keep victims safe. One result of this search is that we are constantly rethinking and reevaluating the criminal justice system’s responses to stalking.
Because stalking has been recognized as a crime for only about a decade, our approach to the problem is still in its infancy. Creative practitioners around the country have developed great ways to respond to the crime and to keep victims safe. Those ideas, shared and spread around the country, have gained wide acceptance. For the most part, that’s great. But what do we do when we find out that our well-intentioned advice might actually be putting victims in danger? Experts are now struggling to find the best advice for victims about whether, when, and how they should respond to contact from their stalkers.
One common piece of advice is telling victims that if they "just ignore the stalker, the stalking will stop." Experience has taught us that this advice seldom works. The stalker is pursuing the victim for a reason, and the behavior is likely to escalate if he or she is not getting the desired reaction from the victim. For example, if a victim who is being stalked via the Internet completely stops using the computer (even if that were possible), the stalker usually recognizes that he or she is being ignored and does something else to get the victim’s attention. Rather than ignoring the behavior, victims of stalking should seek help from trained advocates and law enforcement officers who can help them assess the threat level that the stalker poses and advise them what measures they can take to stay safe.
We are also reconsidering what to tell victims who report that stalkers are harassing or threatening them by phone. The standard advice has been that victims should disconnect their phones and get a new, unlisted phone number. Getting a new number is a good idea, but it turns out that disconnecting the old one may be a mistake. The Seattle Police Department’s Domestic Violence Unit has found that when stalking victims disconnect the phone, virtually 100 percent of the stalkers escalate their contact to in-person stalking. The Seattle Police now advise victims to get a new phone number but keep their old phone line active and connected to an answering machine to capture any possible evidence.
So, if ignoring stalkers doesn’t work, what about the advice many well-meaning professionals often give victims, to tell their stalkers—once and forcefully—to leave them alone? This advice may serve a purpose if the stalker doesn’t understand that his or her attentions are unwelcome and fear-inducing. Such stalkers may stop if they are appropriately warned. However, much stalking involves unmistakably deliberate behavior that could never be confused with innocent, possibly welcome, non-criminal behavior. In such cases, encouraging a victim to have contact with the stalker, in any form, only increases the stalker’s sense of power and control. Even when a warning seems appropriate, a great deal of thought and safety planning must precede contact with the stalker. Trained law enforcement officers or other legal agents, rather than the victim, should deliver the warning (which should not be a substitute for criminal charges). Because stalkers are dangerously unpredictable, warnings can put them "over the edge," further endangering the victim.
So, as we work with victims, we need to keep helping them with safety planning and threat assessment, and keep looking for better ways to address the problem of stalking. But, as we do this, we must think through the ramifications of all our advice and regularly reevaluate strategies to make sure they are working as intended. Never underestimate the potential threat that a stalker may pose. And, as you figure out what is effective and what isn’t, please share your insights with us, so we can pass them along to other practitioners in the field! Contact us at
[email protected].
Tracy Bahm, Director
Stalking Resource Center
Package is not going to opened. Will be returned .. not by me. Either post or huge friend. With a message of non acceptance etc.
