Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 31, 1993 TAG: 9311030399
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In America today, the word has become associated less with hunters entering woods to track an elusive deer or bear or turkey, than with the epidemic of domestic violence, particularly violence toward women.
The practice is an especially vicious aspect of the domestic-violence problem. It is typically a form of psychological warfare, aimed at paralyzing a victim with fear, imprisoning the victim with invisible chains of terror.
From watching such movies as "Fatal Attraction" and "Sleeping with the Enemy," public awareness and understanding of the problem has grown. Yet, despite anti-stalking laws that have gone on the books in 48 states since 1990, we still are struggling as a nation for a way to stop it.
As is noted in the current issue of Newsweek magazine, there are still far too many cases in which complaints about stalkers - often ex-spouses, former boyfriends (sometimes girlfriends) or individuals who fantasize a role for themselves as a victim's lover - are not taken seriously by law-enforcement officials until the stalkers commit actual physical violence, sometimes murder.
There are still far too many cases, too, in which prosecutors cannot get convictions against known stalkers. In some instances, that's because state laws have been drawn too vaguely, with large loopholes. (Many stalkers, even if mentally ill, are clever in devising stalking methods that will slip past laws.)
In others instances, state statutes are so broad that they could be applied even to reporters legally covering public officials or, say, to perceived pests who may call a city councilman several times a week to complain about potholes. Such laws are virtually useless.
Granted, thorny legal dilemmas present themselves. It isn't easy to write anti-stalking laws that will offer protection for stalkers' victims while also protecting suspects' constitutional rights to freedom of movement, freedom of speech, etc. A model state statute, developed by the American Bar Association and other groups, and due to be unveiled soon by the U.S. Justice Department, may help.
Meanwhile, it's worth noting that Virginia's anti-stalking law - passed in 1992 as only the second of its type in the nation, after California's - seems thus far to be working reasonably well.
One of the simplest in language, it has not been challenged constitutionally in the courts, and while such a challenge might still come, it appears the General Assembly struck a balance between victims' rights and defendants' rights.
Moreover, according to H. Lane Kneedler of Richmond, a former chief deputy attorney general who was instrumental in designing the Virginia statute, local prosecutors are using it successfully in several jurisdictions to halt stalking activities.
Virginia's legislature deserves credit for taking early action against an abhorrent prac tice that is - finally - attracting national concern.
by CNB