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Stalking awareness month 2011

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Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to participate in a Stalking Awareness Event at the University of California, Irvine. AAUW, the nonprofit organization I work for in my day job, co-sponsored it with UCI’s Campus Assault Resources Education department. The event was the culmination of a week-long awareness poster campaign on campus for Stalking Awareness Month.

During the event, a very brave woman in her 30s shared her experiences with stalking. A schoolmate started stalking her (and also attempted to sexually assault her) when she was 14 years old and has stalked as recently as a year ago when he called her office phone number to let her know he was still keeping tabs on her. The psychological games and impact it had on her during the height of the stalking – and through today – was intense.

The most disturbing moment for me was hearing how when she finally told someone about it while still a teenager living at home, he left a cat on her porch with its neck slit, which led her to keep quiet for many more years. She knows she may be putting herself in danger by speaking out about it now, but she is tired of being silent and wants to provide help for others who may be going through a similar situation. It was moving to witness her bravery.

Legally, stalking is defined by state statutes. While statutes vary, most define stalking as conduct that places a person in fear for their safety and directly or indirectly communicates a threat.

Stalking is often tied to other harmful behavior, like domestic violence, sexual assault, and psychological abuse.  3.4 million people over the age of 18 are stalked each year in the United States, most of them are female and between the ages of 18 and 24, and about 75 percent are stalked by someone they know, including 30 percent who are stalked by a current or former intimate partner. (More statistics)

You can find more information about what stalking constitutes, how to get help, and how to raise awareness about this issue from the Stalking Awareness Month website.

During the talk I gave at the UC Irvine event, I addressed a different kind of stalking, one that is familiar to readers of this blog  —

Under the law, stalking has to happen more than once. In the case of street harassment, it usually only happens once, by one person. So technically, it was not stalking, just following. But it is still very threatening.

Exactly 75 percent of the 800 female respondents of my 2009 survey (conducted for my book) said an unknown stranger followed them in public. This has happened at least once to most of my friends and it happened to me three different times. Each time I was so overcome with fright that when I was safe, I was left shaking and crying.

Overall, except for assault, my respondents said that being followed was the most threatening, scary, and upsetting type of harassment they had experienced, often even more than groping, masturbation, or a sexually explicit comments. Women facing street harassment often feel their only choice  is to leave the situation to get to safety, so to realize that the harasser is following them is very upsetting and they fear what the harasser may do. Will the harasser attack them? Will they be able to get away?

So whether the harasser is following a person just once or whether it is daily or hourly, the harassment is threatening and potentially dangerous. The harasser/stalker is exhibiting power over the target, trying to manipulate the target, and hoping to make themselves feel powerful by making the person feel powerless. Yet because so often both stalking and following are construed as flattering attention or the target’s fault, it is minimized as a problem.

Breaking the silence and becoming informed are huge steps toward ending and preventing stalking and following.

There are many resources you can access for dealing with stalking. Here are a few suggestions for what you can do if a stranger follows you:

  1. It’s okay to tell the person to go away or to leave you alone (try using a calm voice and don’t use insults or profanity). You can do this from a distance if it will make you feel safer.
  2. It’s okay to make a scene. If someone is following you in a populated area, announce loudly that there is a person following you and that they better stop. Another tactic, if you feel very worried for your safety, is to approach someone who looks friendly/sympathetic and ask if you can walk with them because you’re being followed.
  3. Take a photo of them. Or take out something to make notes on and turn around and ask the person their name and age write it down and, as you record it, say out loud a description of what they look like. If that doesn’t scare them off, tell them you’re doing a survey and ask them how often they follow people they don’t know, why they do it, how they plan it, etc.
  4. If you feel very unsafe or are not 100 percent certain they are following you, see if there is someplace safe nearby, such as a store or library, that you can go inside to get assistance from someone or just seek safety while you call for help or call the police.
  5. Report the stalker. If you’re in a store, speak with a manager. If you’re someplace with a security guard, talk to them. If the person is harassing you on public transportation, report them to the bus driver or subway manager.

Other ideas?

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Street harassment snapshot: January 23, 2011

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Story Submissions Recap:

I accept street harassment submissions from anywhere in the world. Share your story!

New stories on:

Street Harassment in the News, on the Blogs:

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New:

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DC man murdered for intervening during a harassment incident

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A few months ago, I posted a story about a man who intervened when another man street harassed his wife and then the harasser murdered him. Sadly, I have a new, similar story to share. A man who witnessed another man harassing a woman in Washington, DC, this week intervened, and the harasser murdered him. So devastating.

Bill Mitchell, Image from the Washington Post

From the Washington Post:

Bill Mitchell was the kind of man who stepped up instead of shying away, the kind of person who would help someone even if he didn’t know them, his friends and family say.

So on Wednesday night, after he had seen the play “Cymbeline” at the Shakespeare Theatre with his mother, he hopped on the Metro to the New York Avenue Station, walked home along North Capitol Street and Florida Avenue NW and saw a woman who needed help. Mitchell, 33, got involved.

He exchanged words and possibly tussled with an unknown assailant who was hassling the woman and who then shot and killed Mitchell.

“There was some sort of altercation, and we have to figure out what that interaction was,” said D.C. Council member Harry Thomas Jr. (D-Ward 5), who said he had spoken with police and witnesses. “He may have intervened in something, being a Good Samaritan.”

….

“We hope that his senseless death can help in some way to make the area he lived in a safer place,” the Mitchell family said in a statement.

Mitchell’s younger brother made a plea for information.

“There may come a time when police ask for the public’s help,” Brian Mitchell said. “Please contact the police if you know anything. It was my brother today. It could be your brother, son, sister, mother or daughter tomorrow.”

I applaud Mitchell for being a good bystander and I’m sad that the incident ended this way 🙁 Guns = terrible.

[Thanks to loyal reader MRH for the story tip]

Update: Martha Langelan, author of Back Off!: How to Confront and Stop Sexual Harassment and Harassers, and a brilliant community activist who continues to give workshops in the Washington, DC, area about how to respond to and end sexual harassment just emailed me with her thoughts on this story:

The Bill Mitchell case is heart-breaking.

It’s so important to teach people the nonviolent confrontation techniques that work — to know what to do and how to do it, to stop harassment without having the harasser escalate into physical violence.

Male-to-male confrontations can escalate very quickly. We need men — all the good guys on the planet — to be our allies, but if we want men to intervene, we really need to teach them how to do it. What they say, and how they say it, can make the difference between life and death.

Please tell the men you speak with to intervene, but to PLEASE do so using nonviolent confrontation. The “Voice of God” technique could have saved Bill’s life here:  stand at least 30-40 feet away and yell, “Stop hitting her,” or “stop hassling her,” and “leave her alone, we see you, we’re calling the cops,” then call 911 and stay on the scene, from a safe distance, until the police arrive.

When a man is confronting a man he does not know, it is dangerous for him to get right up in the harasser’s space.  Please intervene from a distance.

If you have any reason to believe the harasser might have a knife or gun, both men and women should do the same thing — use the “Voice of God” to interrupt the harasser from a safe distance, and call 911 immediately.

You can also gather bystanders beside you, at a safe distance, and ask them to call 911, too — (a) you don’t want to let others to walk into the middle of a dangerous situation, (b) a group of witnesses can be a deterrent in itself, to de-escalate the situation, and (c) the more calls, the faster the police will get there.

It really breaks my heart to see people like Bill Mitchell get hurt or killed. We need to teach every man on the planet how to intervene more safely.

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“What’s wrong with that? Isn’t it just a bit of spanking?”

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January 16, 2010 2: 30 a.m.

Walking down Cornmarket street in the heart of Oxford I stopped because I heard a guy shouting at a young woman, “Fuck you! You fucking bastard!” He cornered her in the entrance of Pret A Manger and when she tried to leave he hit her. In the face. Once, -twice and many times more.

I did not wait for him to stop before I turned to my friend who instinctively approached the guy but I held her back as we are two females alone. Instead, I stopped a couple who walked by and asked whether they had seen the police, at this time of night there are many of them around the town center. The helpful young man ran off and returned with two security people.

All three men walked at a leisurely pace towards the victim and perpetrator. They were clearly at loss for what to do. One of them approached the couple and asked, “Is everything alright?” The victim was now on the floor, in the corner of the entrance to the store. The man in front of her. The security person, only upon our insistence that things are not all right, called the police.

Meanwhile both my friend and I walked off to find police officers. I stopped a police car at the corner of Cornmarket and St. George Street and old the female officer that I saw a man beating up a woman. They drove the 50 meters to the incident. They did not even get out of the car, but the perpetrator came to the police car window and they talked. They drove off almost immediately.

My friend and I were still standing at the corner when we saw the guy running towards us, and we ran.

When I turned around to check whether he was still following us, we see him with the girl again. She was screaming and walking along St. George with him screaming back at her. My friend and I ran to the next police couple (always man and woman) at the corner of St. George and New Inn Hall Street. Again, I briefly told them what is up. Their response is something along these lines: Well, we know. Somebody’s already checked and things are ok.

Upon our insistence that things are not ok and he is abusing her about 80 meters up the street, the male police officer turns to us and says: So what’s wrong with that? Isn’t it just a bit of spanking?

We all walked back and saw her cornered into another entrance of yet another store. She did not attempt to fight back, she received her lot. This is clearly not the first time that she has been abused nor will it be the last time – and the police did their part to ensure this won’t be the last time…

What remains of the situation is an utter disbelief at the response of the law enforcement in this country. Is domestic violence here so pervasive that a public display of it is not of interest to four different police officers, two men and two women? Is both the security personnel and the police so badly trained that they don’t know how to interfere in this situation than to speak exclusively with the perpetrator and at best with the victim in his immediate and physical presence?

We literally had to convince all of those who were supposed to provide help and security that a crying woman in the corner is not ok. I feel helpless, angry and frustrated beyond belief that the physical and emotional abuse of this young woman tonight  was not prevented despite our best efforts. Who would have thought that the police we turned to did not even perceive hitting of women on the street as an offense???

All this is happening not in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia or other such “misogynistic” countries but right here under our very nose in Oxford, England, in 2011. What remains for me to do other than share this event with you?

– Marcia

Location: Oxford, UK

Share your street harassment story today and help raise awareness about the problem. Find suggestions for what YOU can do about this human rights issue.

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Two eve-teasers arrested, and an eve-teaser murdered in India

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I read two blog-worthy stories out of India today regarding eve-teasers (street harassers), the first entails police arresting two harassers, the second is about men murdering a chronic harasser (!).

1. From the Times of India:

“Two college students were arrested by the Gurgaon police on Monday for teasing two women passengers in an auto rickshaw…The victims were targeted by the accused while they were travelling in a pink auto, which is being run in the city exclusively for female passengers. Police said the incident took place in Sector 23 around 2 p.m. on January 13.”

Gurgaon is just outside of New Delhi and this arrest seems to be part of the increase in police vigilance to stop eve teasing in the Delhi area, an initiative that was announced at the beginning of this year. I suspect there will be many more stories like this one if the police continue to harshly punish harassers.

2. From Express Buzz:

“Eight persons were arrested for murdering a man who teased a woman at Kumaran Nagar on Sunday. Police said Prakash (35) alias MGR of Sridevi Nagar, Alapakkam, was at Vazhaithope Pagudhi, Kumaran Nagar near West Mambalam, playing cards with his friends Sakthi Saravanan and Babu when a 10-member gang led by Prabhakaran (30) stabbed Prakash and his friends. They were taken to hospital where Prakash died.

Prakash who lived at Vazhaithope Pagudhi 10 years ago used to play cards with his friends after getting drunk. They reportedly had a habit of teasing girls who passed by. Even though he shifted his house to another area, he kept on coming back to Vazhaithope to meet his friends and continued teasing girls.

This angered Prabhakaran, who lived in that area, and he  often picked up quarrels with Prakash. On Sunday, Prakash,  as usual, played cards with his friends and later teased a girl, a relative of Prabhakaran. She complained to Prabhakaran, who along with his brother Bhaskaran and eight friends murdered Prakash. Police arrested eight of them, including the brother and are on the look out for the other two.”

Woah. I’m all for bystander intervention, but not with force or violence unless it’s absolutely necessary. Certainly there are better ways to stop harassers than by murdering them (…right?).

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