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Stalking Awareness Initiative Facts About Stalking Stalking Law Resources T. K. Wolf Stalking Awareness Initiative As an American Indian non-profit organization, T. K. Wolf began seeing the necessity of responding better to stalking victims several years ago. More than one million women and nearly 400,000 men are stalked in the US every year. American Indian women are more likely to be stalked than any other group (17%) compared to white women (8.2%), African-American women (6.5%) and Asian/Pacific women (4.5%).* Stalking is most often seen as a crime affecting domestic violence victims or celebrities. However, people from all walks of life are stalked. Because affordable electronics are everywhere, the crime has become easy to do and difficult to prove. Bosses, employees, counselors, clients, faculty, students, public figures—all of us become susceptible to danger. While behaviors may differ, the common denominator is a real, desired, or perceived relationship by the stalker with a victim. The advice given to victims too often has been the same as for domestic violence where there is overt physical violence. The confusion between domestic violence or spouse battering and stalking has dangerous consequences. Stalkers excel in planning, scheming and subtlety. They use mind games, striving to make the victim feel crazy and helpless. They let the victim know through shifting strategies that they can find the victim anywhere. Recent newsletters from the Stalking Resource Center* call attention to the need to reevaluate the criminal justice system’s responses to stalking, noting that customary instructions may actually be placing victims in further danger. The Center also questions if enough is being done for stalking victims, saying that of the grants given to combat domestic violence, sexual violence and stalking, only seven percent even address problems of stalking. Stalking has only been viewed as a crime in the past decade. Likewise, research on the subject is severely limited as it examines effects on victims and their children, work productivity of victims and families, and the economic cost to society where killings often happen in offices and public settings. The same is true for prevention of stalking behavior and effective response to stalking crimes. The result of stalking is great loss—life, children, jobs, belongings, safety, and trust. Instructed to relocate and change identities, survivors suffer long lasting emotional and social effects. The damage to children affected by stalking is permanent. Legal authorities tend not to arrest perpetrators when prevention of injury and death is still possible because visible evidence is missing or stalking actions take more time to prove. Victims are urged to obtain protective orders but stalkers most often ignore them. Most importantly, the Supreme Court ruled this past year that police are not obligated to enforce them. The act of obtaining a protective order often escalates stalking behavior and in fact may lead to violence. In addition, stalkers capably enlist assistance in their criminal acts from cohorts with a variety of motives. Calls of stalking violations to 911 do not appear to operators to be an emergency and callers are told to file reports during weekday hours at the local police department. While victims are told to document stalking behaviors carefully, requests of law enforcement for reports often go unheeded. *Statistics taken from the Stalking Resource Center –National Center for Victims of Crime (http://www.ncvc.org/src) (For several years T. K. Wolf has worked with highly selective universities and national experts in the field to accomplish better research and treatment for victims and perpetrators alike. Our licensed counselors and staff work with children and adults from all racial groups).     Thank you to Active iNet Services for hosting this website.    visitors since March 9, 2006