Stalking The Average Man

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Criminal Stalking Laws by State. Child Trafficking Resources Archived Trainings.

Stalking Information

Elder Financial Exploitation Advocacy. Resources Webinars Demonstration Sites. Stalking is serious, often violent, and can escalate over time. Some things stalkers do: Follow you and show up wherever you are. Use technology, like hidden cameras or global positioning systems GPS , to track where you go. Find out about you by using public records or online search services, hiring investigators, going through your garbage, or contacting friends, family, neighbors, or co-workers.

Posting information or spreading rumors about you on the Internet, in a public place, or by word of mouth. Stalking is a crime under the laws of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, the U. Media also plays an important role due to portrayals of male stalking behavior as acceptable, influencing men into thinking it is normal.

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Since gender roles are socially constructed, sometimes men don't report stalking. She also mentions coercive control theory, "future research will be needed to determine if this theory can predict how changes in social structures and gender-specific norms will result in variations in rates of stalking for men versus women over time in the United States and across the world. Psychologists often group individuals who stalk into two categories: However, most stalkers are nonpsychotic and may exhibit disorders or neuroses such as major depression , adjustment disorder , or substance dependence , as well as a variety of personality disorders such as antisocial , borderline , or narcissistic.

The nonpsychotic stalkers' pursuit of victims is primarily angry, vindictive, focused, often including projection of blame , obsession , dependency , minimization , denial , and jealousy. In "A Study of Stalkers" Mullen et al. In addition to Mullen et al. This research culminated in one of the most comprehensive books written to date on the subject. It is considered the "gold standard" as a reference to stalking crimes, victim protection, safety planning, security and threat assessment published by CRC Press, Inc.

The National Victim Association Academy defines an additional form of stalking: Both the vengeance stalker and terrorist stalker the latter sometimes called the political stalker do not, in contrast with some of the aforementioned types of stalkers, seek a personal relationship with their victims but rather force them to emit a certain response. For example, most prosecutions in this stalking category have been against anti-abortionists who stalk doctors in an attempt to discourage the performance of abortions.

Stalkers may fit categories with paranoia disorders. Intimacy-seeking stalkers often have delusional disorders involving erotomanic delusions. With rejected stalkers, the continual clinging to a relationship of an inadequate or dependent person couples with the entitlement of the narcissistic personality, and the persistent jealousy of the paranoid personality.

In contrast, resentful stalkers demonstrate an almost "pure culture of persecution ", with delusional disorders of the paranoid type, paranoid personalities, and paranoid schizophrenia. As discussed above, these specific apparently stalking behaviors may have multiple motivations. In addition, the personality characteristics that are often discussed as antecedent to stalking may also produce behavior that is not stalking as conventionally defined. Some research suggests there is a spectrum of what might be called "obsessed following behavior.

Some of these people get extruded from their organizations—they may get hospitalized or fired or let go if their behavior is defined in terms of illegal stalking, but many others do good or even excellent work in their organizations and appear to have just one focus of tenacious obsession. Cyberstalking is the use of computers or other electronic technology to facilitate stalking. In Davis , Lucks identified a separate category of stalkers who instead of a terrestrial means, prefer to perpetrate crimes against their targeted victims through electronic and online means.

Alcohol and physical abuse both played a role in predicting women's cyberstalking and in men, "preoccupied attachment significantly predicted cyber stalking". According to a U. Department of Justice special report [17] a significant number of people reporting stalking incidents claim that they had been stalked by more than one person, with The report did not break down these cases into numbers of victims who claimed to have been stalked by several people individually, and by people acting in concert.

A question asked of respondents reporting three or more stalkers by polling personnel about whether the stalking was related to co-workers, members of a gang, fraternities, sororities, etc. Census Bureau for the Department of Justice. Over a quarter of all stalking and harassment victims do not know their stalkers in any capacity. About a tenth responding to the SVS did not know the identities of their stalkers.

In , Pathe, Mullen and Purcell wrote that popular interest in stalking was promoting false claims. News reports have described how groups of Internet users have cooperated to exchange detailed conspiracy theories involving coordinated activities by large numbers of people called "gang stalking". These have been reported by external observers as being examples of belief systems , as opposed to reports of objective phenomena.

They may reinforce the troubled thinking of the mentally ill and impede treatment. A study from Australia and the United Kingdom by Lorraine Sheridan and David James [36] compared self-defined victims of 'gang-stalking' with a randomly selected group of self-declared victims of stalking by an individual. All 'victims' of gang-stalking were judged to be delusional, compared with only 3. There were highly significant differences between the two samples on depressive symptoms, post-traumatic symptomatology and adverse impact on social and occupational function, with the self-declared victims of gang-stalking more severely affected.

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The authors concluded that "group-stalking appears to be delusional in basis, but complainants suffer marked psychological and practical sequelae. This is important in the assessment of risk in stalking cases, early referral to psychiatric services and allocation of police resources. There was no significant difference between the incidence of stalking in rural and urban areas. A similar retrospective study published in in Psychological Medicine based on a sample of threats to the Royal Family kept by the Metropolitan Police Service over a period of 15 years, suggested that Every Australian state enacted laws prohibiting stalking during the s, with Queensland being the first state to do so in The laws vary slightly from state to state, with Queensland's laws having the broadest scope, and South Australian laws the most restrictive.

Punishments vary from a maximum of 10 years imprisonment in some states, to a fine for the lowest severity of stalking in others. Australian anti-stalking laws have some notable features. Unlike many US jurisdictions they do not require the victim to have felt fear or distress as a result of the behaviour, only that a reasonable person would have felt this way. In some states, the anti-stalking laws operate extra-territorially, meaning that an individual can be charged with stalking if either they or the victim are in the relevant state.

Most Australian states provide the option of a restraining order in cases of stalking, breach of which is punishable as a criminal offence. There has been relatively little research into Australian court outcomes in stalking cases, although Freckelton found that in the state of Victoria , most stalkers received fines or community based dispositions. Section of the Criminal Code , titled " criminal harassment ", [45] addresses acts which are termed "stalking" in many other jurisdictions.

The provisions of the section came into force in August with the intent of further strengthening laws protecting women. Section has withstood Charter challenges. Article of the French Penal Code added in penalizes "Moral harassment," which is: The definition is not strict and allows "similar behaviour" to also be classified as stalking. In , Indian Parliament made amendments to the Indian Penal Code , introducing stalking as a criminal offence. A man committing the offence of stalking would be liable for imprisonment up to three years for the first offence, and shall also be liable to fine and for any subsequent conviction would be liable for imprisonment up to five years and with fine.

Following a series of high-profile incidents that came to public attention in the past years, a law was proposed in June , and became effective in February D. If the perpetrator of the offense is a subject tied to the victim by kinship or that is or has been in the past involved in a relationship with the victim i. In , Japan enacted a national law to combat this behaviour, after the murder of Shiori Ino. In the Wetboek van Strafrecht there is an Article b [55] that considers stalking as a crime, actually an Antragsdelikt:.

The act of someone who repeatedly follows, without right or a legitimate interest, a person or his or her home, workplace or other place frequented, thus causing a state of fear. Making phone calls or communication by means of transmission, which by frequent or continuous use, causes fear to a person. This shall be punished with imprisonment from one to three months or a fine if the case is not a more serious offense.

Already before the enactment of the Protection from Harassment Act , the Malicious Communications Act and the Telecommunications Act now the Communications Act criminalised indecent, offensive or threatening phone calls and the sending of an indecent, offensive or threatening letter, electronic communication or other article to another person. Before no specific offence existed in England and Wales but in Scotland incidents could be dealt with under pre-existing law with life imprisonment available for the worst offences.

In England and Wales , " harassment " was criminalised by the enactment of the Protection from Harassment Act , which came into force on 16 June It makes it a criminal offence, punishable by up to six months' imprisonment, to make a course of conduct which amounts to harassment of another on two or more occasions.

The court can also issue a restraining order, which carries a maximum punishment of five years' imprisonment if breached. In England and Wales , liability may arise in the event that the victim suffers either mental or physical harm as a result of being harassed or slang term stalked see R.

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In , the Prime Minister, David Cameron , stated that the government intended to make another attempt to create a law aimed specifically at stalking behaviour. The act of stalking under this section is exemplified by contacting, or attempting to contact, a person by any means, publishing any statement or other material relating or purporting to relate to a person, monitoring the use by a person of the internet, email or any other form of electronic communication, loitering in any place whether public or private , interfering with any property in the possession of a person or watching or spying on a person.

The Protection Of Freedoms Act also added Section 4 a into the Protection From Harassment Act which covered 'Stalking involving fear of violence or serious alarm or distress'. This created the offence of where a person's conduct amounts to stalking and either causes another to fear on at least two occasions that violence will be used against them or conduct that causes another person serious alarm or distress which has a substantial effect on their usual day to day activities.

In Scotland , behaviour commonly described as stalking was already prosecuted as the Common Law offence of breach of the peace not to be confused with the minor English offence of the same description before the introduction of the statutory offence against s. Provision is made under the Protection from Harassment Act against stalking to deal with the civil offence i.

Victims of stalking may sue for interdict against an alleged stalker, or a non-harassment order, breach of which is an offence. California was the first state to criminalize stalking in the United States in [60] as a result of numerous high-profile stalking cases in California, including the attempted murder of actress Theresa Saldana , [61] the massacre by Richard Farley , [62] the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer , [63] and five Orange County stalking murders, also in Congressman Ed Royce introduced the law in Within three years [64] thereafter, every state in the United States followed suit to create the crime of stalking, under different names such as criminal harassment or criminal menace.

The Driver's Privacy Protection Act DPPA was enacted in in response to numerous cases of a driver's information being abused for criminal activity, with prominent examples including the Saldana and Schaeffer stalking cases. Stalking is a controversial crime because a conviction does not require any physical harm. It is particularly restrictive, by the standards of this type of legislation. The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence defines and criminalizes stalking, as well as other forms of violence against women.

Stalking Statistics and Data

Stalking has been a key plot element in a number of movies. Robert De Niro has notably played a stalker in at least four films. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Stalker disambiguation. For harassment-related policies on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia: Cyberstalking and Cyberstalking legislation.

False accusations and Persecutory delusions. Taking stock of the emerging literature". Aggression and Violent Behavior. Office for Victims of Crime. Criminal Justice and Behavior.

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