Have you ever been stalked?

I cleaned out my office over three ago when I retired from teaching. Recently I started to go through piles of information on lesson plans, syllabi, teaching strategies, and anything else relevant to my work over the past thirty years. Most of the stuff will be recycled but some will be shared with colleagues.

The other day, I started to work on box of files and handouts labeled, “Abnormal Psychology” in black magic marker. This was my favorite Psychology course. I loved to study the causes of psychological disorders and treatment successes.

As I went through the contents of the box I found a bunch of papers bound by a thick rubber band. There was also a cassette stuck under the band. As I took off the rubber band a few words on of the sheets of paper startled me again. These were love letters written to me from one of my students. There were over twenty-five of them.

This is not your usual crush on the teacher story. It is a scary story about a stalker. I know that you have seen stories about celebrities being stalked like Beyonce, Justin Bieber, Britney Spears, David Letterman, Rihanna and many others. In some of these cases the stalker followed their victim’s every move like going to the grocery store and at certain times even broke into their houses.

People love celebrities, especially whichever one they’ve chosen as their favorite. The trouble is, not everyone knows how to handle their admiration in a healthy way. Let me make this clear. I’m no celebrity and this happened thirty years ago when I was teaching in Brooklyn.

I had a night class in Human Sexuality that I taught at a college near Sheepshead Bay. It was great. After an evening of going over interesting subjects I grabbed a beer and a dozen clams at a restaurant on the water. I don’t know exactly when it started but I began to receive these “love letters” at my apartment in Marine Park, Brooklyn. In addition, over a period of maybe eight months, I was also sent cash, money orders, a VCR and picture of me playing basketball at a local park.

I sent all the stuff back and didn’t respond to numerous phone messages sent by my student. My strategy was to ignore the attention with the hope that it would just end. This obviously didn’t work so I went to the local cops who said they couldn’t help because no laws were broken. After reading one of the amorous letters, the police Sargent noticed the name on the bottom of the page, and exclaimed, “Love, Bob?!” I guess he expected a woman’s name.

Yes, a married male student at least twenty years older than me fixated on me. It didn’t matter to him that I was heterosexual. The letters, romantic sheet music, money orders, and bizarre phone messages continued for a few months.

I told a female friend about my dilemma and she suggested bringing Bob to her church. My response was, “You don’t get it. He’s nuts and church won’t help.” After one of my classes she approached him and talked him into going to a service. Shortly after the service, I received a phone message that went something like this, “I’m going to kill all those religious bastards; I’m going to kill them all.” I still have this message on the cassette from thirty years ago. There is a lot more on it. Most of it is angry ranting.

I brought the tape to the cops who called Bob up and told him to leave me alone. At the time there were no stalking laws so they couldn’t arrest him. Apparently, Bob doubted that he was called by real cops so he phoned the precinct to check it out. One of the cops became enraged and said to him, “You better leave this professor alone or we are going to bust you up.”

During my research I found this quote in Psychology Today (Feb. 2112), “As the loss of privacy in our culture converges with the demand to know every detail about celebrity lives, we can expect to see more stalkers, some of whom will certainly be lethal.”

You don’t have to be a celebrity to get stalked and now, if it happens, there are laws to help protect us.