Stalkers’ reign of terror
An avalanche of horrific testimonies by victims of stalking reveals a dark and sinister problem lurking in New Zealand, writes Bess Manson.
‘I’m going to die without you, I’m going to hurt myself, I just want to talk to you!’’ Threats of suicide and sexual violence, and relentless attempts to get back together, were part of Thalia’s* everyday life for months after escaping her abusive relationship.
Her lover had become her stalker, an omnipresent and inescapable shadow. One night she woke to find him in her bed assaulting her.
‘‘He wasn’t supposed to be at the flat. I told him to stop and went into the shower and he followed me in. I froze, I cried but it didn’t stop him.’’
Thalia, 28, had endured sexual abuse during the relationship, but did not acknowledge it was that at the time. There was coercion which escalated over time, she says.
During their four-year relationship he was emotionally manipulative, sexually aggressive and increasingly controlling. Jealous outbursts and three-hour rages were not uncommon.
He socially isolated her over the years and kept tabs on her movements, texting and phoning her constantly.
‘‘If I didn’t answer straight away he would check in with my friends to find out where I was, what I was doing.
‘‘I am independent and progressive and don’t believe in giving things up for men, but I absolutely did. I lost who I was when I was with him, just to keep him from these rages, these unreasonable and unwinnable arguments.’’
Eventually she managed to break off their relationship. That’s when the stalking really began.
It started with hundreds of text messages, some of them threatening suicide unless she came back to him. ‘‘I turned my phone off one night and, when I turned it on again, there were 50 texts from different numbers after I’d blocked his.’’
There were nights he called incessantly. After police warned him off, he began to follow her physically. ‘‘I joined a gym after our break-up and suddenly he’s joining up and turning up when I’m there.
‘‘I’d be waiting at the bus stop and there he’d be. He turned up at my work. I would always be looking over my shoulder.
‘‘I kept moving and staying at addresses I hadn’t taken him to during our relationship. I hid.
‘‘I became so paranoid, but the way he kept showing up everywhere I don’t think it was paranoia.’’
Thalia is one of 712 mostly women who responded to a survey on intimate partner stalking. Her experiences and myriad others feature in a report by Women’s Refuge released this week.
It is a veritable tomb of harrowing testimonies by women who have been terrorised physically and mentally by their stalkers.
Police don’t keep statistics on how often stalking-type patterns of behaviour are reported to them, but refuge statistics suggest it is perpetrated against more than 70 per cent of its clients pre-separation, and more than 60 per cent postseparation.
Sinister calling cards
Stalkers’ sinister tactics included relentless phoning and messaging, physically following their victims and hi-tech surveillance. They often left sinister tokens, delivering a subtle reminder of their continued assumed power over the victim.
One put sugar in his victim’s petrol tank, and weed-killer in the water tank. Another swapped his victim’s medication around, randomly opened garage doors at night with a remote he still had, and rammed her car off the road.
One ex-partner drew a smile in the dust on windows – a harmless act in any other circumstances but a sinister show of menace by a stalker.
In another incident, a stalker got into a woman’s home and shaved the family pet.
One victim went to the extent of cutting back all the trees around her garden so that her stalker could no longer use them to hide while spying on her.
Natalie Thorburn, Women’s Refuge policy adviser, who wrote the report with refuge boss Ang Jury, says digital platforms provide virtually unlimited mechanisms to harass, threaten, and perpetuate contact.
Attempts to damage the victim’s reputation through the use of social media are often successful, and victims told of having to manage humiliating, untrue, and malicious disclosures to their managers, colleagues and social network, she says.
One woman said her stalker threatened to contact her employer in an attempt to get her fired. Another created fliers with her photo and phone number, and threatened to distribute them in her town.
Revenge porn was a tactic frequently used by stalkers.
Jealousy was a constant theme threaded throughout almost all victims’ testimonies.
Advising victims to reduce their digital presence to stop digital harassment is necessary but counterproductive to what Women’s Refuge is all about, Jury says. ‘‘We want to empower women to live safe lives, but what we are doing is shrinking their access to the world.’’
Stalking remains a misunderstood crime that leaves the burden of proof resting on the victim. Few prosecutions result from stalking, leaving victims resigned to their lives being constantly sabotaged.
Devastating effects
The response to the online survey, which looked specifically at intimate partner stalking (IPS) against partners or former partners, was well beyond what Women’s Refuge had expected.
It looks like a far bigger problem than anything it has come across before, says Jury. ‘‘When I started to see what was emerging from the survey, the corrosive nature of it was really brought home to me.
‘‘This is all-pervasive and it is something that requires victims to sort it out for themselves by and large in our current [judicial] system. There is very little, apparently, that can be done to help them.’’
The impacts of stalking extended beyond physical and emotional wellbeing into social, employment, and family spheres. The upheaval of their own and their children’s lives, the loss of employment and financial stability, all had devastating effects.
Hypervigilance, fear, and a sense of futility or hopelessness about ever escaping the stalking plagued victims and was often a reason they returned to the abuser. They then at least knew the patterns of abuse would be interspersed with periods of relative safety.
Some stalking behaviours can be prosecuted under various laws such as the Harassment Act 1997 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, but court action for stalking crimes is infrequent.
The prevalence of stalking is in stark contrast to the rates of prosecution and conviction for harassment-type offences.
New Zealand lags behind countries such as Australia, Britain and the Netherlands, which strengthened legislation around responding to and legislating against stalking after several high-profile cases found it to be a precursor to murder.
Frustrated, stigmatised, blamed
‘‘One woman described her stalker drawing a smile in the dust on windows – a harmless act in any other circumstances but a sinister show of menace by a stalker.’’
Compounding victims’ misery was a lack of help to stop their stalkers’ reigns of terror. Most said their experiences with police were
negative. One wrote that trying to report her stalker was a ‘‘total joke’’.
Only a small majority (54 per cent) of those who took part in the survey reported the stalking to police at any stage.
One woman relayed her story of walking into a police station and reporting a host of symbolic threats, including notes on the car and tampering with belongings, only to be asked if she had recently had a mental health assessment.
Another said she reported her expartner’s drive-bys and text messages from multiple numbers, but was told nothing could be done. She was then followed and throttled, and said she ‘‘felt relieved’’ because it was finally a tangible act of violence on which police could act.
The difficulty is that most stalking actions, taken individually, do not appear to be overtly threatening or harmful. It is only when they are put together that it adds up to a pattern of harassment, usually involving a constellation of intrusive, distressing, annoying, or forceful behaviours, Jury says.
A dozen text messages a day from a partner can be normal and enjoyable for some, but a relentless attempt to monitor and control for others. A card in the letterbox that reads ‘‘Thinking of you’’ or ‘‘Can’t wait for tonight’’ can be interpreted as a thoughtful token of affection, or a threat of repeat violence, depending on the context and history of the relationship.
Stalking myths
Plagued with myths that minimise, deny, or legitimise the act, stalking is often unhelpfully interpreted as misplaced romantic love and commitment, rather than power, abuse, and violence.
Fear is the most accurate indicator of whether an intimate stalker will use serious or fatal violence against them, Jury says.
‘‘But regardless of whether there has been violence, explicit threats, or whether there is evidence of the stalking, if a victim feels that there is a high risk of violence, then there probably is.’’
It is paramount that first respondents, particularly police, and other agencies take victims’ feelings seriously and act protectively, even if there is little objective evidence to justify their fear, she says.
‘‘We need to do some really serious awareness-raising within police about what stalking really is and where it leads. Complaints of being followed and harassed digitally need to be taken seriously.’’
Protection orders ‘toothless’
Protection orders were deemed too flimsy by victims in the report, and too often not enforced, to the point where many didn’t bother with them. Many called them ‘‘toothless’’.
They were often viewed as requiring the abuse to meet an unrealistically high threshold, Jury says.
Victims were frustrated by the implicit messages being given to perpetrators by the lack of action over minor breaches or persistent stalking when a protection order had been granted.
‘‘Until we get to the point where our police and our judiciary understand the context, and understand that actually she’s not a bit nuts or being paranoid by being bothered by these things, but that it is signalling a whole lot of stuff that needs to be taken seriously, then protection orders are not going to do the business.’’
Almost 40 per cent of stalking incidents lead to physical violence, according to international research, but it’s nearly impossible to get a protection order unless there has been physical violence – something that someone can see – Jury says.
In New Zealand, an average of 13 women a year are killed by their partner or ex-partner, according to refuge statistics.
‘‘So it seems to me that we should be paying an awful lot more attention to what these behaviours are and taking them very seriously.
‘‘New Zealand prides itself on being ahead of the game, so I was surprised to see other countries had specific stalking legislation.
‘‘We are a real outlier on this. How did we manage to fall behind on this one? It’s not good enough.’’
* Not her real name.