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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Eight million American women -- or one in 12 -- will be a victim of stalking at some point in their lives. So why are law enforcement agencies so inept at handling their cases?
Oct 6, 2003 | Taxie Sierra didn't consider herself a victim of stalking. She assumed stalking was something that happened to movie stars and politicians, people whose celebrity drew crazed pursuers they didn't even know. She knew her own pursuer well: high school sweetheart, then husband, then estranged husband, Andy. Even when, six years after they'd separated, he called her relentlessly at home and at work to alternately beg her to get back together and threaten to kill her. Even when he seemed to know wherever she was going in their hometown of Pensacola, Fla., and would often turn up to make a scene with his gun. Even when he broke into her house to check the recent numbers on her Caller ID. Even after all that, she didn't consider Andy a stalker. She knew there was danger, but she thought she could handle it.
Then three years ago, the night after her first date with another man, she heard the sputtering motor of Andy's car in her driveway. He came into the house waving his gun and she suddenly knew he would kill her. But what happened to Taxie was even worse: He pushed her out of the way, ran down the hall, and shot their 12-year old daughter, Desirea, five times as she lay sleeping. Until the smoke cleared, Taxie thought he had been shooting holes in the ceiling. She still thought he was just trying to scare her.
Taxie ran outside for help and police soon surrounded the house. For a while, the police, then Taxie, then Andy's mother tried to reason with him, asking him to move Desirea to the front door so that the paramedics could take her to the hospital. Finally, the police stormed the house. Andy was hiding in Taxie's closet, where he shot and killed himself as the police opened the door. Desirea died in the hospital later that night.
"He always told me he would make me sorry," says Taxie, now 30 years old. "I never dreamed he would do it by killing our child."
Taxie is one of the more than 8 million American women -- or one in 12, according to the Justice Department -- who have been pursued by a stalker at some point in their lives. Like her, many people think stalkers are the bane only of celebrities, but those cases account for a tiny fraction of the 1,376,000 people who are stalked in the United States every year. Most people who are stalked know their stalkers all too well. And despite the enduring image of Glenn Close lunging from a bathtub at Michael Douglas in "Fatal Attraction," men are the stalkers in 87 percent of these cases. In fact, most stalkings are the result of relationships in which the man just won't let go.
And like Andy, some stalkers turn into killers. According to the Justice Department, more than 80 percent of the women stalked by a current or former lover are assaulted by him, and 31 percent are sexually assaulted. Worse yet, a study of women killed by current or former partners -- according to the FBI 1,600 such women are killed each year -- showed that 76 percent of these murders were preceded by stalking. In many cases, the stalking began even before the relationship ended, with obsessed husbands and boyfriends finding ways -- sometimes employing friends, sometimes putting technology to new and ominous uses -- to monitor their partners while they were out of sight.
"Stalking has been around for a while, but people hadn't been paying attention to it," says Tracy Bahm, director of the Stalking Resource Center at the National Center for Victims of Crime. "There's new emphasis on stalking because a number of recent studies are showing how serious it is. We know it's a huge warning sign that violence can occur. We're aware that if we intervene early on, there won't be so many homicides."
The increasing dangers of stalking were recognized by Congress in July. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., introduced a bill in the House to make January National Stalking Awareness Month, prompted by a brutal stalking case in New Mexico in which a woman named Peggy Klinke was murdered last January by her ex-boyfriend after repeatedly seeking help from law enforcement. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) followed with a similar bill in the Senate. If passed, activists like Bahm hope Stalking Awareness Month will galvanize communities around the country to organize educational campaigns and other events. "These awareness months are a great way to coordinate activities and make people more proactive than reactive," Bahm says.
Victims of domestic violence and stalking are often encouraged to get orders of protection (also called restraining orders), which limit contact by the offender, but many victims continue to face danger even after they turn to law enforcement for help. Both Peggy Klinke and Taxie Sierra obtained protective orders -- Peggy six months before she was murdered, Taxie about a month before her estranged husband killed Desirea. A recent study by Victoria Holt of the University of Washington shows that women who get protective orders are 60 percent less likely to have further contact with their stalker or abuser. For some women, though, the effect of these protective orders can be like throwing gas on a fire: The stalker becomes enraged and more determined than ever to pursue the victim. To get a permanent protective order, the victim has to face her stalker in court. Often, this humiliating face-to-face contact causes the situation to escalate. "I think the restraining order was the icing on the cake," Taxie says now.
Why do protective orders fail to protect so many of the victims who obtain them? According to Doreen Orion, a Colorado psychiatrist who was stalked by one of her female patients, part of the problem is that if local police and prosecutors don't enforce these orders, they can actually encourage the stalker. "Getting a restraining order is like telling a stalker, No!" says Orion, the author of "I Know You Really Love Me: A Psychiatrist's Journal of Erotomania, Stalking and Obsessive Love." "If he violates the order and the police do nothing, as very often happens, then the stalker thinks, Wow, I just violated this court order. Let's see what else I can do."
Although every state now has anti-stalking laws and there is a federal anti-stalking law, many criminal justice professionals still don't understand these laws and haven't figured out how to apply them to the complaints piling up on their desks. Rhonda Saunders is a Los Angeles prosecutor who helped write California's pathbreaking 1990 anti-stalking law, the first in the nation. Saunders trains officers how to use the stalking laws and says that even in California many cops still don't understand how serious stalking is. "The majority of stalking cases are domestic-violence related," she says. "The detectives will write down something like 'violation of restraining order,' but they don't bother to ask why the woman got a restraining order in the first place or if there were other incidents. They need to ask more questions and do more work to put a stalking case together."
Mark Wynn is a former Nashville police officer who helped start his department's domestic violence unit and is now a consultant who trains medical, social service and criminal justice professionals about stalking and other domestic violence issues. The problem, he says, is that policing and prosecuting a stalking case is unlike policing and prosecuting other cases. Instead of a clear-cut offense like a burglary or an assault, cops and prosecutors have to respond to a pattern of behavior, a course of conduct over months that may include repeated phone calls or e-mails, pet abuse, petty vandalism, surveillance, threats and more. All these seemingly lesser incidents can paint a picture of deadly intent if law enforcement personnel have the eyes to see it -- which they often don't.
"The stalking bills are still foreign for most police departments because they're different from other statutes," Wynn explains. "They don't say, 'Bring me Bill, who broke into your house and took your TV.' They say, 'Bring me Bill, who over a period of time has done these things.'" Wynn and the NCVC have joined with Lifetime television to try to close the learning gap.
Lifetime, which will air the Peggy Klinke story on Erin Brockovich's "Final Justice" show this winter, is also producing a 15-minute training video called "Stalking: Real Fear, Real Crime." The videotape will be offered free to police departments around the country later this year.
