Stalker’s decade of cyber terror
Two Kiwi sisters who have been targeted by a United States-based stalker in a long campaign of online harassment are begging for authorities to intervene.
Harriet Campbell, 25, said the harassment began 10 years ago when she met Eric Purnell on an online forum, and he began asking questions about her personal life that made her uncomfortable.
Purnell then allegedly started bombarding her with abusive messages from fake accounts, forcing her to quit social media completely.
The stalker then found her contact details and those of her sister, Alice Campbell, and begged Alice to convince Harriet to resume their online contact.
Their experience is becoming increasingly common: it is difficult for authorities to crack down on international cyber-crime.
The situation worsened to the point that the sisters started receiving death and rape threats from an online persona called ‘‘The Hacker’’.
This prompted them to complain to the New Zealand police and their counterparts in the United States.
American police say they have been unable to prosecute Purnell because the crime was classed only as a misdemeanour.
NetSafe chief executive Martin Cocker said the Harmful Digital Communications Act which came into effect two years ago would apply to Purnell only if he were a New Zealand resident.
The ability of the authorities to deal with the problem depended on the jurisdiction where the alleged harasser lived, he said.
If the alleged harasser had been living in Australia, prosecuting him wouldn’t have been so challenging. But in the US, it often depended on which state the alleged offender came from.
Cocker said NetSafe deals with around 50 cases of online harassment every week, and by the time victims realised the individual they were dealing with online is mentally unstable, it was usually too late to break it off.
According to the sisters, Purnell’s focus on them expanded to their entire family, and from 2011, their family-owned business in Tauranga was also targeted.
This included their business’s Facebook page being flooded with abusive reviews generated from fake accounts and up to 60 messages a day from hundreds of fake Facebook accounts, email addresses and phone numbers.
Alice Campbell said the Facebook page was essential to the survival of their business, but the animosity in the comments was so harsh that other family members often had to take over the administration of the page because it became too much for any one person to handle.
‘‘It’s a fulltime job keeping on top of this. Every day I get to the cafe I have to peek through the door before I get in because I’m afraid he’ll be there.
‘‘He’s a big guy.’’
The Sunday Star-Times tracked Purnell down to the US state of Maryland.
During an hour-long interview, he denied he was behind the decade-long harassment campaign and claimed he was also a victim.
He blamed the abuse on someone he referred to as ‘‘The Hacker’’, who had been hacking into his computer and social media accounts for the better part of a decade to wage this harassment campaign on the Campbell sisters and another 80 of his contacts.
‘‘Because of him my reputation online is being ruined,’’ said Purnell.
But the Campbell sisters don’t believe a word if it.
And an investigative commander for the Salisbury Police Department in Maryland, Jason King, confirmed via email in September 2016 that he had visited Purnell, and also spoke to the man’s therapist to ask him to stop the harassment. ‘‘In light of the international travel and significant expense required to prosecute what is, in essence, a misdemeanour crime, I will be closing this matter with no additional police action at present,’’ read the email.
Psychotherapist Kyle MacDonald said Purnell’s behaviour was a clear case of stalking – persistent and unwanted contact aimed at gaining control over another person.
MacDonald said not giving an offender a response often fixed the problem, but Purnell could well be getting satisfaction from simply imagining their reaction to his activities.
Every day I get to the cafe I have to peek through the door before I get in because I’m afraid he’ll be there. Alice Campbell