The Emporia Gazette

February 14, 2012

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Advances in communications — e-mails, text-messaging and social networks like chatrooms, Facebook and MySpace — have enabled some unintended results.

“Those kinds of things all come into play, because with all the technology, it’s having a huge impact on stalking,” said Lori Moore, who is in charge of public relations for SOS of the Flint Hills.

Stalking is a crime that affects both men and women, and it’s being emphasized in January during National Stalking Awareness Month.

“Stalking means an intentional harassment of another person that places the other person in reasonable fear for that person’s safety,” said attorney W. Irving Shaw. “So, it could be a man stalking a man.”

And, in at least one case pending in Lyon County District Court, that is the situation.

Threatening text messages and e-mails prompted the victim to seek a Protection From Stalking order to stop the harassment.

Other victims of stalking, too, have alleged that their stalkers have called repeatedly or sent messages; some have said that the stalkers also have damaged their personal property.

A total of 21 PFS requests were filed in 2008 in Lyon County District Court; in the six-county SOS territory, 72 cases were filed, with about 50 percent of them proceeding to a final court order.

Moore said that most stalking incidents involve people who know each other, unlike 25-year-old Justin Thurber, who is accused of stalking, kidnapping, raping and murdering 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm, a student at Cowley College, in 2007. Thurber allegedly stalked several other young women.

The Kansas Legislature is working on a bill that would make it easier for law enforcement officers to enforce the PFS, Moore said.

Almost all of the stalking reports in this area, however, do not involve strangers who drive by victims’ homes or turn up regularly at places and event where the victims are. Moore has seen only one stranger stalking case in her three and a half years with SOS.

“99.9 percent of the stalking orders on file are people who’ve known each other. People who have had some kind of relationship, or a dating relationship,” Moore said.

Most often, the stalking is heavily laced with electronic contacts.

Moore cautioned both victims and stalkers to take care of how they use their Internet social pages.

Class schedules, itineraries and other personal information that users give their friends become fodder for stalkers.

“Someone who’s not using that for a friendly purpose has your schedule, knows where to find you from what you’ve put on your Facebook page,” Moore said.

Chat rooms can hold the same threat, when conversations with strangers contain personal details or lead to face-to-face meetings.

“We see that on ‘To Catch a Predator’ all the time,” Moore said. “This stuff is a lot of fun, but it can really be kind of dangerous. You’ve just got to be careful how you use it.”

Potential stalkers, too, need to be educated about how their actions can lead to charges in court, she said. They may not realize that repeated harassing or threatening phone calls, text messages and e-mails not only can constitute stalking, those messages can be retrieved and reproduced to be used against them in court.

“Maybe your intent is not stalking, but what you’re doing is stalking and it has to stop,” she said. “... It’s probably one of the last things that’s going through their minds when they’re texting. If it is unwanted, it is crossing that line, and stalking.”

People who believe they are being stalked can go to office of the Clerk of the District Court to obtain paperwork to begin proceedings. The clerk or her representative will notify SOS of the request, and an SOS advocate will assist the victim in completing paperwork, Moore said.

The advocate also will talk with the victim about a safety plan in case the situation escalates and ways he or she can be protected.

“What we always tell someone is that no matter what you do, you have to remember this is a piece of paper, and there has to be some safety planning that goes along with it,” Moore said.

Advocates ask whether victims are in fear for safety purposes or is the stalking annoying.

“Is there something we can do? Another venue?” she said. “... It’s really difficult, being able to make an assumption, ‘Well, I don’t really believe they’re going to do anything.’”

A temporary PFS order can be issued, with a final hearing for a permanent order following in about 10 days. Both parties may attend the final hearing and can be represented by counsel.

“And it is up to the person who filed the protection order to prove that stalking is happening,” Moore said.

That evidence likely will be supplemented by additional contacts that happened after the initial filing. Moore said in addition to the safety information, the SOS advocate will give the victim a kit that contains notepaper to log contacts, incidents, times and other pertinent information that can be used as evidence later.

“Victim Services, in many ways unfortunately, it comes back on the victim protecting themselves,” Moore said. “Truly, what needs to happen, as a society, we need to hold that perpetrator, that stalker, that abuser, accountable for their actions — which in Emporia, they’re very good about enforcing those orders.”

Victims almost always are represented, at no charge, by a Kansas Legal Services attorney, she said.

Shaw said that after a temporary order is issued in PFS cases, the complaints usually are heard by a judge within a week or two. If the facts support the ruling, the judge will issue a permanent order that bars the stalker from continuing his or her harassment.

“If they violate the stalking order, then that becomes a criminal case,” Shaw said.

More information about stalking may be had at stalkingawarenessmonth.org or at soskansas.com.