"[20] Disruptions in daily life necessary to escape the stalker, including changes in employment, residence and phone numbers, take a toll on the victim's well-being and may lead to a sense of isolation.
[21] According to Lamber Royakkers:[19] Stalking is a form of mental assault, in which the perpetrator repeatedly, unwantedly, and disruptively breaks into the life-world of the victim, with whom they have no relationship (or no longer have).
This report provides considerable data by gender and race about both stalking and harassment,[24] obtained via the 2006 Supplemental Victimization Survey (SVS), by the U.S. Census Bureau for the U.S. Department of Justice.
In addition, she hypothesizes that gender may also affect how police handle a case of stalking, how the victim copes with the situation, and how the stalker might view their behavior.
Media also plays an important role due to portrayals of male stalking behavior as acceptable, influencing men into thinking it is normal.
The nonpsychotic stalkers' pursuit of victims is primarily angry, vindictive, focused, often including projection of blame, obsession, dependency, minimization, denial, and jealousy.
[27] In "A Study of Stalkers" Mullen et al. (2000)[28] identified five types of stalkers: In addition to Mullen et al., Joseph A. Davis, Ph.D., an American researcher, crime analyst, and university psychology professor at San Diego State University investigated, as a member of the Stalking Case Assessment Team (SCAT), special unit within the San Diego District Attorney's Office, hundreds of cases involving what he called and typed "terrestrial" and "cyberstalking" between 1995 and 2002.
Published by CRC Press, Inc. in August 2001, it is considered the "gold standard" as a reference to stalking crimes, victim protection, safety planning, security and threat assessment.
[28] One of the uncertainties in understanding the origins of stalking is that the concept is now widely understood in terms of specific behaviors[24] which are found to be offensive or illegal.
Some of these people get extruded from their organizations—they may get hospitalized or fired or let go if their behavior is defined in terms of illegal stalking, but many others do good or even excellent work in their organizations and appear to have just one focus of tenacious obsession.
[32] Amongst college students, Ménard and Pincus found that male stalkers were likely to have a high score of sexual abuse as children and narcissistic vulnerability.
A question asked of respondents reporting three or more stalkers by polling personnel about whether the stalking was related to co-workers, members of a gang, fraternities, sororities, etc., did not have its responses indicated in the survey results as released by the DOJ.
[46] A similar retrospective study published in 2009 in Psychological Medicine, based on a sample of threats to the royal family kept by the Metropolitan Police Service over a period of 15 years, suggested that 83.6% of these letter-writers had a serious mental illness.
[47] Dressing, Kuehner and Gass conducted a representative survey in Mannheim, a middle-sized German city, and reported a lifetime prevalence of having been stalked of almost 12%.
[49] Tjaden and Thoennes reported a lifetime prevalence (being stalked) of 8% in females and 2% in males (depending on how strict the definition) in the National Violence Against Women Survey.
There has been relatively little research into Australian court outcomes in stalking cases, although Freckelton (2001) found that in the state of Victoria, most stalkers received fines or community based dispositions.
[54] The Chief, Policing Services Program, for Statistics Canada has stated:[55] ... of the 10,756 incidents of criminal harassment reported to police in 2006, 1,429 of these involved more than one accused.In China, simple stalking was treated as a kind of minor offence when it amounted to harassment, so stalkers were usually punished by a small fine or less than 10 days detention under the Public Security Administration Punishment Law.
[57] Many cases across China have shown that ordinary people who have been stalked may still be unable to solve the problem after they seek help from the judicial authorities.
[58] In the homicide case [zh] in Laiyuan, Hebei in July of the same year, women and their families who had been stalked and harassed for a long time also helped the police repeatedly to no avail.
[63] Article 222–33–2 of the French Criminal Code (added in 2002) penalizes "Moral harassment," which is: "Harassing another person by repeated conduct which is designed to or leads to a deterioration of his conditions of work liable to harm his rights and his dignity, to damage his physical or mental health or compromise his career prospects," with a year's imprisonment and a fine of EUR15,000.
[64] The German Criminal Code (§ 238 StGB) penalizes Nachstellung, defined as threatening or seeking proximity or remote contact with another person and thus heavily influencing their lives, with up to three years of imprisonment.
In April 2021, the National Assembly passed an act intended to address widespread stalking crimes and protect victims, which came into force on October 21 the same year.
Yurchenko, author of Crimes Against Information Security, claims that victims of persecution, in the presence of appropriate circumstances, have the right to use Article 133 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Compulsion to Sexual Actions" (from a fine of 120 thousand rubles to imprisonment for up to one year), article 139 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Violation of the inviolability of the home" (from a fine in the amount of 40 thousand rubles to imprisonment for two to three years), article 163 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation Extortion (imprisonment up to seven years), article 167 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation Intentional destruction or damage to property (up to imprisonment in accordance with the gravity of the offense).
Therefore, it is necessary to contact the relevant law enforcement agency at the scene of the crime (in this case, it is imperative to obtain a coupon-notification of the KUSP, confirming the fact of filing an application).
Violators of a protection order issued by a court in accordance with Article 12, Paragraph 1, Subparagraphs 1 to 3 shall be sentenced to the imprisonment of not more than three years, or detention; in lieu thereof, or in addition thereto, a fine of not more than three hundred thousand New Taiwan Dollars may be imposed.
In England and Wales, liability may arise if the victim suffers either mental or physical harm as a result of being harassed (or slang term stalked) (see R. v. Constanza).
In 2012, then-Prime Minister David Cameron stated that the government intended to make another attempt to create a law aimed specifically at stalking behaviour.
Provision is made under the Protection from Harassment Act against stalking to deal with the civil offence (i.e. the interference with the victim's personal rights), falling under the law of delict.
[91][93] The first anti-stalking law in the United States, California Penal Code Section 646.9, was developed and proposed by Municipal Court Judge John Watson of Orange County.
[99] In 2018, the PAWS Act became law in the United States, and it expanded the definition of stalking to include "conduct that causes a person to experience a reasonable fear of death or serious bodily injury to his or her pet".