The ugly truth about stalkers

Photo by Talles Alves on Unsplash
The worst stalker I’ve ever known was a girl. She fell for a guy in our grad program. They became loose friends. Went out for dinners. Saw movies. Drank wine in living rooms. Always as part of a group, though. The problem — she thought they were dating the whole time.

At our department Halloween party, she started stroking his crotch in front of everyone. He laughed, played it off as a joke. Then swapped seats with me. An awkward conversation followed.

“So how long have you known John?” she asked me. “Have you ever dated him? Where does he live?” That kind of stuff.

Things got worse that night when John’s ride bailed on him. The stalker insinuated herself into our exit planning and offered to drive him home. She insisted with such bravado that we all consented.

Outside his apartment, the girl tried to guilt-trip John into a kiss. Again, he laughed it off and climbed out of the car. She rolled down her window and begged to see him again.

He said something like, “I’m sure we’ll run into each other.” Big mistake. Because that’s not what the stalker heard. In stalker language, John had said, “I can’t wait to see you again. Leave your bedroom window open, and lie naked until 2 am planning our wedding in your head.”

Even worse? Now she knew where he lived. Over the next week, she showed up twice at his place unannounced. He’d just moved there, so she played off her visits as neighborly kindness. Oh, look. She’d brought him some bookends. A bottle of wine. A dead cat. I’m kidding.

None of us believed John had a stalker. Not even him. Statistically, most stalkers are men targeting women. But female stalkers happen. That’s why we have Fatal Attraction, after all. And The Babysitter.

John made an effort to stay friends with the girl. She was part of our social scene. And she had yet to reveal her true self.

But she wouldn’t relent. Kept texting him all the time. Talking about him constantly. Even trying to hug him every time we went out. She started talking about him like they were engaged. Some people even thought they were dating.

Finally, John had to crush her feelings and make her despise him. After a failed coffee talk, he sent her a terse warning message to back off. After that, he ignored every avenue of communication. Finally, she began to fixate on someone else. That’s the way of some stalkers.

Stalking has a gender dimension. But it effects everyone. A stalker poses a threat to everyone the victim knows. Stalkers are willing to hurt anyone they view as a threat to their own dominance.

Stalkers think they love their victims. But they don’t. They love an idea, an image, and they project that onto someone who fits.

Sadly, our laws and cultural mindset don’t help. Victims of stalking have it rough. Danger. Stress. Doubt. Even guilt.

People don’t take stalking seriously until it’s too late. We see all the warning signs and add up the pieces later. Then we tell each other, “I knew there was something *off *about him.”

Stalking feels more serious when someone targets you, or someone you care about. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.

Myself? I’ve had cyber-stalkers for years. They come and go. One of them continues to harass me daily. I’ve reported him ten times. So have friends. But his accounts remain active.

That’s one reason I’m especially secretive. The last thing my family needs is someone leaving black roses in my mailbox. At least none of them have found where I live or work. But it’s an ongoing concern.

Victims of stalking receive a typical form of shame and blame from haters. Their logic — posting selfies and blogging somehow makes *us *responsible for the behavior of others. “Well, if you didn’t post so many selfies, you wouldn’t have this problem.” And so on.

Obviously, I could deactivate all of my social media. Stop blogging. Wear a veil and move to the mountains.

Turning into a hermit, that’s one way to ditch a sicko.

That sounds like bullshit, but it’s how many universities handle stalking cases. We’ve had a couple dramas with students forming fatal attractions. It usually results in the victim transferring to another school and deleting all of her social media. Basically throwing herself off the face of the planet.

Our officials shrug and quip, “There was nothing actionable.”

The legal lines are blurry for stalkers. A stalker can persistently make you feel uncomfortable for weeks on end. They can take all kinds of liberties with your photos, daily routines and habits, your social groups.

Do you like going to the Starbucks at the bookstore after class? If you have a stalker, he can wait for you there every day until you show up. Maybe he can’t sit at your table, but the one next to you is open.

All he has to do is buy a scone and sit there pretending to work on his laptop. He can pretend you’re having a study date.

The only thing you can really do is find another coffee shop. Sure, the police can try to intimidate him. But he’s not breaking any laws. And he knows it. That’s how a stalker’s mind works.

Most stalkers come into your life with a casual smile, not a hoodie and a knife. They don’t start by waiting for you in the bushes. They greet you with conversation in warm daylight.

College students provide easy prey for stalkers. A university feels like a safe place, most of the time. You generally don’t see other students as threats. That’s what stalkers count on. I’ve seen it happen.

As a professor, I’ve watched creeps introduce themselves to freshmen girls and pressure them to reveal bits about their lives that they wouldn’t tell other random strangers. At first glance, why wouldn’t you? It’s easy to feel more familiar with someone who shares a classroom with you for three hours a week, and occasionally says something semi-intelligent.

A stalker builds up a basic level of trust to exploit. A girl accidentally shares personal information like what dorm she lives in, and what professor she has for Econ 211. A stalker might even casually ask where she works. She’ll tell him, even if she knows better. Why? Nobody wants to sound rude.

Stalkers prey on your politeness. If you don’t answer their innocuous questions, suddenly you become a bitch.

And they’ll tell you that right away. They’ll try to make you feel guilty or insensitive for hesitating to answer invasive questions.

I’ve seen creeps try to embarrass girls for “acting rude to them” when they hesitated to say what exact floor of a dorm they lived on, or where they liked to hang out after class.

I’ve tried reporting students who harass girls in that kind of seemingly polite way. I’m usually dismissed. My boss once basically told me, “It was probably just a miscommunication. I’ve talked with that guy a few times. He seems okay, just a little rough around the edges. That’s all.”

Stalkers play the “rough around the edges” defense all the time. They present an invasion of someone’s boundaries as social awkwardness. Underneath all that, they’re much more adept than we give them credit for. Maybe they’re not suave or charming, but they know how to manipulate.

They also play the hero card. Worse, they believe wholeheartedly in their own heroic tales. One stalker told me he was trying to save a girl from an abusive boyfriend. Another spread rumors that a girl’s father ran a sex trafficking ring, and was forcing his daughter into prostitution. In every case, the stalker said he was the only one who could save her.

Stalkers lie to everyone, especially themselves. Stalkers blame their victims for leading them on. They accuse us of sending secret messages to them. Taunting them. Conspiring against them. They tell themselves that deep down we love them. If only we’d give them a chance…

Meanwhile, they do everything they can to turn our worlds upside down. Prey on our habits, our friends, the places we feel safe. They’re some of the worst people on earth, and they don’t deserve a crumb of pity.

I’ve written satirical pieces about stalking before, mainly to help myself relax when I was *actually *dealing with stalkers in my own life. It felt like the only thing I could do to earn some peace of mind.

Practically speaking, you should contact the police if you feel like you’ve got a stalker. Tell people. Involve your friends and family. Never try to deal with a stalker on your own.

You don’t have to be polite to someone you view as a potential stalker. In my experience, that’s what they want. Live on the side of caution. If someone’s trying to climb into your business, and you don’t want them there, tell them to back off. Sane, reasonable people might feel hurt or offended. But they’ll respect your demands. That’s what sane people do.

Culturally, I’m not sure what solutions exist. What I know is that stalkers get away with it more often than they should.