By: Wendy

Wendy — Wed, 28 Feb 2024 18:29:46 +0000

I am here looking for perspectives on stalking. Stalking in a domestic or romantic relationship (or non-relationship) with one person persisting in abusive behaviours like harrassment and surveillance is the typical view.
Stalkers can be very organized and involve multiple methods and additional people, all with the aim of destroying the target’s life as thoroughly as possible. They obviously do not want to get caught. In such projects, the target is easily made to look delusional as they are followed, hacked, and harassed in their home and anywhere they go, day or night. The more isolated or alone the target is, and especially if they don’t have children, the easier it is to carry out any number of tactics on them.
Police, and even women’s organizations or shelter often dismiss such experiences in exactly the way the stalkers want – as a delusion in a hysterical woman’s head. The subversive and calculated nature of the tactics, with circumstantial evidence at best, make police want nothing to do with the challenge, even if they believe the victim in some small way. Even coercion laws have no bearing on this sort of thing.
The misogyny embedded in stalking and destroying a woman’s life is the same as other forms of abuse, often without the direct violence or coercion.
It’s so sad to read about the woman who only went outside eleven times in four years.
A crafty stalker would turn their attention to making it impossible to be inside. That this happens is no delusion.
It’s barely even talked about, except as a sign of “mental illness”.
As numbers of all sorts of abuses against women continue to rise, it’s tough to imagine how anything is still discounted in this way.

By: Stacy Haner

Stacy Haner — Tue, 28 Dec 2021 18:15:56 +0000

I’ve seen many victims of IPV that do not want to be separated from her abuser. Those victims are treated very differently by the system from those that do. Victims who decline the device or accept the device but choose not to use it as directed, will receive a diminished response from the system.

The response of the system is often highly ineffective anyway in protecting the victim, which is generally the reason that many victims don’t want the response they get or other responses available that system expects victims to want.

There are victims that would benefit from this device. When they ask for it, we should listen to them. If victims tells us that the device won’t help, we need to listen to them and come to an understanding as to what will help.

The end goal is to end IPV by achieving equality and maintaining the support and safety of victims while we move towards that goal. Victims know what they want and what they need to be safe. They need our support and to be able select the approaches that will work best for them and their situation without judgment.

I am so encouraged that these conversations take place and that you take the time to have them. It gives me hope.

Comments on: Potential life changer?

By: Wendy

By: Stacy Haner