Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 6, 1992 TAG: 9202060516
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
STALKING
TWO RECENT movies, "Fatal Attraction" and "Sleeping with the Enemy," were not just cinema thrillers to some men and women in Virginia. They were vivid reminders of personal experiences with the particularly vicious and potentially deadly form of sexual harassment known as stalking.For legal purposes, stalking is defined as repeated conduct intended to cause emotional distress and cause an individual to reasonably fear death or bodily injury. Often, it's related to domestic situations: The stalker is an ex-spouse or ex-lover. But the stalker also may be a virtual stranger or casual acquaintance with a fiendish obsession for a chosen victim.
Members of Attorney General Mary Sue Terry's Task Force on Domestic Violence were surprised at the number of stalking cases they heard in a series of public hearings over the past year. Other cases were also brought to the attention of several lawmakers. As a result, the General Assembly is considering legislation - including a measure pushed by Terry - that would specifically make stalking a crime in Virginia, subject to a jail sentence and sizable fine.
The legislation is needed.
In some domestic cases, a court-issued restraining order may suffice to halt a stalker's psychological torment of, say, an estranged spouse. Then, again, such protective orders may be virtually useless. In some cases - the woman, for instance, who plotted to have someone kill Roanoke banker Warner Dalhouse and his wife - existing laws addressing specific criminal behavior will kick in. Harassment is illegal as it is.
Nonetheless, many victims are subjected to a long and expensive legal process to stop a stalker - or they discover legal remedies don't readily apply in their situations.
Take the case of one woman who testified before an assembly committee last week: "I do not yet have a story of rape and violence," she told legislators, "but I have lived for a period of over three years with that fear." She told of a former business associate who had become obsessed with her, who dogged her heels - on shopping trips, to church - and who intimidated and threatened her with notes and messages on her telephone-answering machine. When she went to the police, "the policeman said he could do nothing. He handed me his gun and said, `You need to buy one of these because you cannot do anything until he rapes you or he kills you.'"
That, obviously, is no answer, no solution and no comfort for individuals who become the anguished targets of stalkers.
In fashioning proper legal relief for victims, the assembly must take care, of course, not to pass legislation that would encourage frivolous or vindictive charges against the innocent. The law should not give rise to harassment by unfounded cries of harassment.
Depending on how it is enforced, the law could run up against constitutionally protected rights, such as of mobility and speech. A black man walking in a white neighborhood, for example, is not as such guilty of stalking. Intent will be hard to prove in any case.
Still, the law will help dramatize this kind of threat, mostly against women. It will give law-enforcement agencies a broader base to take action against those who set out to emotionally molest with scare tactics that may not stop short of bodily harm.