Anyway, he started following my friend around, waiting for her as she left school, popping up while we were at the cinema etc. She got totally freaked out and stopped living her social life, stopped coming to sessions etc. Until one day one of our friends pointed out that the more she treid to avoid him, the stronger and more persistent he seemed to get. Anyway, one evening we were walking round the park and he started following us, even loitered outside the ladies loos as we tried to shake him off. My friend then flipped out and basically said to him in a very (fake) ’sexy’ voice “Ok, you wanna have sex, let’s have sex, right here, right now, come on!” and other things along those lines, properly playing the part of a stereotypical female sexual predator. It totally freaked him out and neither of us have seen him since.

Based on this experience, I’d say that a lot of stalker-behaviour is about power, control, domination and other ego-based things. Once the ‘victim’ shows herself to not be a victim, the stalker shows himself to be the cowardly bully he is.

Of course, this is not true for every single case, and it is way easier to say than to actually do, but I find that remembering that any kind of bully is essentially a coward is helpful, and has always given me the inner strength to get through the experience.

Its scary that an infactuation can lead to a complete disruption of your life and your personal space. I’d hate to think I couldnt just walk to the shops in fear of being followed, chased or worse.
The other issue to this is the unknown factor, what could a stalker be capable of, is it just infactuation or something more serious – the fact that most of the above suggests a certain element of fear only makes it scarier – Oh, you say Sarah that you dont have a mobile phone to this day but the web provides more info about us than ever before, with facebook and other social sites you can build a pretty good picture of anybody – does this worry you, do you control what you release to the www??

I had a stalker about ten years ago – it went on for a number of years. What really scares me is that I think it was going on for a couple of years before I even knew about it. The really freaky part (at least I think it’s freaky) is that at the time, I was a married, stay-at-home-mom.

One of my kids was involved in a sport and my stalker was the father of another kid. I didn’t know him, didn’t know his name – I got a creepy vibe from him, so I avoided him whenever I could.

Once I realized what was going on – and he KNEW I finally knew what was going on – things went full force. He was everywhere I was, following me (even what I would describe as CHASING me), with my kids in my mini-van. I went to the police with his license plate number and was told he was a former sheriff’s deputy. He had no fear of the police and of course, I had to wonder how much they were actually doing to try and help me. I felt trapped and helpless.

When you are lying awake night after night, you can think of thousands of things you could do in retaliation, but I had to decide not to do anything outside of legal channels. I figured: if it went to court, or he ended up arrested, I didn’t want to have done anything where someone could point a finger at me and say: “Oh, but SHE did THIS!” It would muddy the waters and maybe cast doubt on me being an innocent victim. Maybe he would claim there was something going on between us? I was afraid to tell people – I mean, not everyone is going to believe that a normal, stay-at-home mom with young kids just happens to pick up a stalker.

Anyway, he eventually moved out of state, but I continued to get phone calls for years. According to things I’ve read, the stalker will only give up on you when they find someone else to focus on. I’m sure I’m not the first person he had done this to and most certainly I am not the last.

I’ve recently heard a story about a young lady experiencing what she felt was harassment by an older man. She had the courage to take it to the authorities, tell her story, and try to set the wheels of justice in motion. She has since been literally skewered by the public. This is why people don’t tell, and this is also why I believe that there isn’t an effective system in place to deal with problems of this magnitude.

Victims of stalking, abuse, rape, harassment, any sort of inappropriate crime perpetuated in many cases against women by men (although I realize it isn’t always this way, that females can be any of those things too) face the toughest conundrum–tell the truth and go for justice that is more than likely going to be less serious than the scumbag deserves, or suffer in silence, causing irreparable damage to your psyche, so that you won’t have the added pain of being branded a rat, a liar, a tattletale, or God forbid someone who “asked for it”.

Thanks for sharing your story, Sarah.

This chronic fear was the catalyst that started my entire cycle of panic attacks and depression.

Speaking of “Craigslist stalker”, my ex- boyfriend that I hadn’t seen since my sophmore year in highschool (about 15 years ago) stalked me via CL, last fall. Once he located me, thanks to lots of friends who commented on his ads saying “She works at blah blah blah, she is my neighbor, blah , here is her address…. blah etc.” never thinking that this could be harmful, they thought that they were helpful. Wrong. That is a nightmare that I am still dealing with.