It’s not uncommon to hear a woman playfully tell a friend, boyfriend or potential boyfriend that they’re "Facebook stalking" her when the other person is always checking her profile or comments often on different posts.
But what if that person really started becoming obsessed and sent tons of messages or commented on everything, even after the woman told him or her to stop. What if it got to the point where the obsession started to threaten the safety of the woman?
The Bureau of Justice in the U.S. Department of Justice found in a report on female victims of violence that women are stalked more often than men (20 per 1,000 female victims versus seven per 1,000 male victims), and “during a 12-month period in 2005 and 2006, an estimated 3.4 million persons age 18 or older were victims of stalking.”
Mary Friedrichs, the director of the Office of Victim Assistance at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said the general term "stalking" is used over "cyber stalking," since technology is just one way for stalkers to get access to a victim.
A fact sheet from the National Center for Victims of Crime’s Stalking Resource Center stated that “persons aged 18-24 years experience the highest rate of stalking,” “1 in 4 victims report being stalked through the use of some form of technology (such as e-mail or instant messaging),” and “10 percent of victims report being monitored with global positioning systems (GPS), and 8 percent report being monitored through video or digital cameras, or listening devices.”
She said in the past school year, her office dealt with 12 cases of stalking, though not all college students who are being stalked come to the office, and it could also be classified under harassment.
When threats start being made and there is possible harm to the victim, that becomes stalking, she said.
“Harassment would perhaps be somebody who’s sending four or five messages a day, and stalking might be 50 or trying to contact the person more often, or if it’s looking more scary,” Friedrichs said. “The way you define stalking is when it gets scary.”
She gave the example of a man saying when he leaves roses at a woman’s doorstep, she’ll know he’s out to get her, and then the roses appear.
However, she said it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between harassment and stalking because “harassment can scare people too.”
There are different reasons for stalking, including obsession, revenge and anger, especially involving failed relationships.
Some people decide to stalk through the Internet because there’s more anonymity, she said, as well as “easy access” through sites like Facebook.
She said if someone is constantly looking at another person’s Facebook page, that’s not considered stalking because “nobody’s scared.”
“Also, if you put that up on your Facebook page, you’re really saying ‘You’re welcome to look at this,’” Friedrichs said. “If they don’t know that somebody’s looking at them all the time, while it may be obsession along the part of the person doing the looking, the victim would never know.”
Some psychological and tangible impacts of stalking for the victim are anxiety, limited social contact and poor grades.
She said 90 percent of harassers will stop if the police call them and warn them to stop or there will be legal consequences. However, 10 percent will continue harassing or stalking.
It is important to work with the police and campus resources to increase chances of safety when a woman feels that she is being stalked.
Jessica Ladd-Webert, a client services coordinator in the same office as Friedrichs, said most stalkers use technology to get to the victim, and in her experience she has seen more female victims of stalking at her college.
“I think technology is our friend and our enemy,” she said. “When I talk with students, I always talk about ‘Think when you post.’”
Stalkers can use devices like Google Maps, GPS, Facebook and cell phones to track victims, and stalking “tends to be pretty purposeful.”
“It’s a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear,” Ladd-Webert said.
Relationships can play a factor in stalking, as well as power and control, feeling rejected and wanting to seek affection, Ladd-Webert said, adding that sexual assault and intimate partner violence can be connected with stalking.
She said victims can have similar side effects to those who have suffered other types of trauma, including loss of sleep, depression, anxiety, hypervigilance and concentration problems.
Like other types of violence, she said stalking tends to be underreported because victims minimize the situation and reason that it’s "normal," they don’t have resources, they feel threatened and are afraid it might get worse if it’s reported, and they think the stalking will go away.
If students feel they are being stalked, they should start documenting behavior, seek support and not wait too long to report the behavior, she said.
“The average person waits six months before deciding they need to talk to somebody or think about getting this behavior to stop, and that’s way too long to let something interfere with your life,” Ladd-Webert said.
Sources:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf
http://ncvc.org/src/main.aspx?dbID=DB_publications127
http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32458