---

Written by: Alynna

<Alynna> pardon me?
<JohnDoe> i said thank for the hospital i will post you something
<Alynna> any time
<JohnDoe> that isn’t what people over here post
<Alynna> you are confusing me
<JohnDoe> it is a surprise
<Alynna> what do you mean 'post' then?
<Alynna> who is this?
<JohnDoe> where am I
<JohnDoe> think about   it
<JohnDoe> where do i live alynna
<Alynna> who is this?
<JohnDoe> this is your nemesis
<Alynna> and who would that be?
<Alynna> I have no enemies
<JohnDoe> you should   know that
<JohnDoe> really
<Alynna> Tell me who this is
<JohnDoe> you know who for an intelligent person you are being obtuse
<Alynna> Tell me who this is
<JohnDoe> shouldn’t be hard to know because destroying your  life is my aim#
<Alynna> are you coming here?
<JohnDoe> to your place
<Alynna> to do what?
<JohnDoe> whatever I feel like doing no one worried what was done to me
<Alynna> you will not succeed
<JohnDoe> really I   grew up in a war zone you don’t know what I can do
<Alynna> but I know what I can do
<JohnDoe> nothing is what you can do
<Alynna> what will you do when you get here?
<Alynna> you don’t have a passport
<JohnDoe> doing that doesnt keep me out for long if at all
<Alynna> tell me what you intend to do
<Alynna> what will you do when you get here?
<Alynna> Tell me, JohnDoe
<Alynna> I just want to know if I have to say goodbye to people whom I love
<Alynna> they would never forgive themselves if I died without saying goodbye
<Alynna> they would wonder
<JohnDoe> shouldn’t take long look in the mirror, job done
<Alynna> *sigh*
<Alynna> I don’t want to die, JohnDoe, and I don’t think you want to do this
<JohnDoe> your radar faulty you have no idea how screwed off I am doctor has me down as an invalid no work for a year
 
 
 

Yes, those are actual transcripts from a personal experience of mine. Don’t worry,  put the Kleenex away; I am not going to make you suffer an Oprah moment. But I did need to catch your attention and make you aware of why I am writing this series. This series is intended to be a realistic exploration of Stalking in the cyber world we are currently living in. Laws aren’t perfect, I did many things wrong with my stalker, the Internet is not private and people can be downright scary. During and after my stalking experience, I went on an information expedition. I would like to share with you some of the experiences and interesting facts I have found pertaining to law, psychology and ways. I am neither lawyer, psychiatrist, nor do I see myself as a “victim”, merely a writer who wants to share her experiences of an emergent phenomenon.

This first article in this series I would like to describe to you my experience. I apparently lived through it, so they tell me, so you know it has a happy ending. I am only burdening you with my personal example so that we can examine a real experience and use it as a Case History; find out what I did right, what I did wrong, what I could have done better. I also want to raise awareness of what ISN’T stalking. Much of Stalking is based on perception: the perception of being in harms way or the perception that stalking cannot be real if it’s done on the Internet.  Because the Internet is usually traveled from home, most people do not consider it real. Often times you will hear people referring to ‘real life’ as opposed to what they experience on the Internet. Dispelling this myth will be crucial in using the laws already existing against Stalking. Stalking itself was only recently made illegal; until 1989 police could only assist a victim after another crime (like assault or murder) had been committed. During this series, we will examine the history and some of the laws that now exist. Since the passing of the first Anti-Stalking law in California, there has been an abundance of studies done on the different types of stalking as well as stalker and victim profiles. The next article in this series will present some of these useful profiles to help you recognize potential stalkers and relationships that may end up being a stalking situation. The final segment in the series will put all these tools together to better protect you on the Internet.

The perception that the Internet is not ‘real life’ is extremely pervasive among Internet users and non-users alike This misperception minimizes the profound emotions and very real feelings a person has when involved in an Internet relationship. Most Internet users will confess to liking their Internet friends more than their ‘real life’ friends! Physical attractions are just as strong during videoconferencing as they are in the outside world. Many couples have met on the Internet and have been happily married ever since. I work on the Internet full time and most of my friends are Cyber-friends. (I really must get out more). My so-called ‘real life” IS the Internet. This is my reality. The terror of being cyber-stalked is just as real feeling as being stalked by the creep down the road.

Perceptions of what it means to be Cyber-stalked as well as who is likely to stalk and be stalked are a bit off the mark, generally. I would venture to guess that your first impression of me, after claiming to have been stalked, was that I am a fluffy, silly woman with no common sense and a love of drama. You also may assume that I am new to the internet and that you, being so experienced, would never be so foolish as to fall prey. I used to assume the same thing about stalking victims. I do not see myself as a victim, I prefer the word ‘target’. For the purposes of this article, I would like to define the difference as this: A stalker focuses his or her obsession on a ‘target’; they become a ‘victim’ only if the stalker is successful. My old perception of a stalker was a dark, shadowy figure of a person I did not know…. The boogieman. I was quite surprised when my mild-mannered, educated professional friend became a stalker.

My predator and I had been friends for many months before things went south. We enjoyed a fairly close friendship and I had no fears about eventually giving him my phone number and telling him certain personal things. In a healthy relationship it is normal to know a friend’s occupation, spouse’s name and other such innocent information. He would chat in the same places I would and eventually became familiar with my friends, coworkers and companies I contract with for my online business. I have dozens of such friends on and off the Internet. I honestly did not sense anything odd about my friend at all for many months.

My first clue came that something was wrong with him was when I started a new online job that would take a lot of time. He began to frequent this job site as my time available to talk to him decreased. As my time with him decreased, his aggression began to increase. He began to be assertive with clients he perceived as being rude to me. It became a vicious cycle: the job took more time away from our friendship, he became more convinced he was losing me, he would get more obstructive, I would push him away more. He would enter chat under different nicknames and blindside me with shocking private messages. He seemed to enjoy watching me try to recover my composure, and then message me that I obviously had to quit because I couldn’t handle stress. He put my job at risk and I finally had no choice but to ask him to not come to my place of business and break off the friendship. Oh boy, all hell broke loose then!

I have a guestbook on my website where he began to leave awful entries. He would make entries into the guestbook and  me names, call me a fraud, and publish my personal information there. It became my ritual to check my guestbook every waking hour. I started out by removing them, which made him angry. So then I thought I would get funny and just edit them so they said nice things and leave them attributed to him. Well, I thought it was pretty funny but he didn’t. I eventually learned how to prevent him from making entries on my guestbook altogether, which saved me immense amounts of time from checking, editing and deleting!

We had always chatted quite a bit on ICQ, sending messages all day long like normal friends do. He would send the usual terribly frightening messages all day and all nightlong. He would often send multiple, repetitious messages to me by the dozens, rendering my ICQ unusable. I couldn’t close all his messages fast enough to receive messages from others. My profession requires ICQ to talk to the clients; he was disrupting my job and causing me financial burdens. I put him on Ignore, which worked great the first couple of weeks, until he figured out what I had done. This incensed him. He quickly learned to simply register a new ICQ number, spam me, and then switch to a new ICQ number.

My stalker zeroed in on the fact that I love my jobs and did everything in his power to get me fired from those jobs. I subcontract with many sites all of which I list on my free website. He went to my website and contacted all the sites I link to, telling the owners that, unless they fired me, he would name them as being fraudulent on every newsgroup and public forum he could. I am fortunate to enjoy a good reputation among site owners and most contacted me immediately, telling me of his emails to them. I don’t know how many places he actually posted slanderous information or if he even did. He eventually developed his own website, naming each site and even printing the full name of my new boss! Ohhh talk about embarrassing!!! I had to personally notify each person and company named so that they would be aware of the slander against them. I felt like such a weak idiot. To have to admit this to people I wanted to impress was just awful.

He would flood me with emails every day, some telling me he loved me, most telling me he hated me. I had serious concerns that he would commit suicide over me and I didn’t want to live with that burden. I had been answering his emails, trying to let him off easy. That proved to only make him madder. He began to tell me how he would ruin my life. He used my phone number to find out what town I live in. With very little research, he found out the name and submission information of the local newspaper. He told me in an email that he had attempted to post a slanderous editorial, which the newspaper promptly rejected. Golly that made him angry. He also told me of plans to try and cause trouble for my spouse at his workplace by emailing his bosses and telling them I was a fraud. When I reminded him of his failure with the newspaper and suggested that bothering my spouse wasn’t going to work, he became increasingly explosive and the death threats began.

Most Internet users are miles (if not continents) apart, making physical stalking much more unlikely but not impossible. All death, kidnapping or any other physical threats of any kind should be reported IMMEDIATELY to officials and NEVER be taken lightly. We are living in a relatively blissful time now…. Even after months of researching stalking, I could not find any reference to a Cyber Stalking that has resulted in death. I really hope that means there haven’t been any; I would be even happier if I thought it was going to stay that way.

I count myself among the lucky majority to not have been in violent physical contact with my cyber-stalker. It did get a bit close for comfort at one point. The conversation at the beginning of this article was written after he was released from the hospital. They deemed him unfit to work for an entire year, allowing him to devote all of his time to stalking me. With no job to hold him in one spot, he was free to roam as he chose. He started out for the United States from his home in the UK. He would contact me every few hours, telling me he was coming for me.  I could trace his whereabouts through his messages and could see that he was, indeed, on the move. I was increasingly frightened with each message. I began to visualize my own demise; every creak in the night would awaken me. I work from home in a very quiet town; each passing car or pedestrian would give me a start. Fortunately he was detained and hospitalized before he got too terribly far. I never found out who caught him and can only hope that his travel is monitored now.

While he was in the hospital I decided the situation was rapidly decaying into a serious threat to my life, business, family, and mental well-being. I knew I needed to tell the people around me but I felt embarrassed and ashamed. I, after all, had been on a webcam for 4 years and should have known better. I began to believe him when he said I deserved this treatment. I was sure that people would tell me that, because my job is on the net, that I should expect such things… Job risk. I also realized all the mistakes I had made along the way. I was very embarrassed to expose my stupidity to my friends and coworkers. Worst of all, I had to tell my new boss, whom I admire and respect very much. Here I wanted to impress my new boss and instead I had to ask him to protect silly little me from the boogieman. My cyber-stalking experience left me with fear for personal safety, embarrassment, loss of income, concern about family members’ safety and reputation as well as the financial security and personal reputations of co-workers and supervisors.

In the next installment of this series, we will look at the different types of Obsession that may lead to stalking behavior. We will also take a look at the steps of a deteriorating relationship and look for signs of stalking behavior emerging. We can then begin to make sense of what thoughts and feelings the potential stalker may be feeling and get some insight into how far they are willing to carry the obsession.