Information and Research

Foreword: Due to not having been at school last week, I hadn't been able to post some of the posts I had brewing on my school account, so here is my information and research on stalking that I completed two weeks ago!

 Stalkers….

Praise the Lord for my mother! Her job requires her to attend a two-day course, once a month, in various places around the country, about all kinds of horrible and criminal things. Recently, she attended the part of the course that focuses on stalking and has been letting me in on all kinds of details and facts about stalking, stalkers and the reasons behind the things they do. Here is some of the stuff I found out…

• -        Stalkers tend to make themselves known in some way. This is usually in a very subtle and secretive way, like leaving one flower on the victim’s windshield every day, or moving things in their house, moving them back, and then moving them back again. There have also been cases when the stalker would plant a flower in their victim’s garden at night, and then would dig it up the next night, replant it the next night, and then dig it up again. This can go on for some time.
• -        A lot of stalkers know, or have known, their victims personally. They like to make their victim’s notice strange things happening around them, and then, even though they are actually the cause of such things, offer themselves as sources of comfort to their victims, who do not know that these things are actually down to their comforters.
• -        Looking into the histories and backgrounds of convicted stalkers, a lot of them have been raised in violent families. This could mean that they were attacked themselves, or that their parents/guardians had an abusive relationship, which they could have witnessed, whether accidentally or not.
• -        Some stalkers justify their actions by thinking that their victims should be flattered by their “immense appreciation” of them.
• -        In "A Study of Stalkers" Mullen et al.. (2000) identified five types of stalkers:
• o   Rejected stalkers pursue their victims in order to reverse, correct, or avenge a rejection (e.g. divorce, separation, termination).
• o   Resentful stalkers pursue a vendetta because of a sense of grievance against the victims – motivated mainly by the desire to frighten and distress the victim.
• o   Intimacy seekers seek to establish an intimate, loving relationship with their victim. To many of them the victim is a long-sought-after soul mate, and they were 'meant' to be together.
• o   Incompetent suitors, despite poor social or courting skills, have a fixation, or in some cases, a sense of entitlement to an intimate relationship with those who have attracted their amorous interest. Their victims are most often already in a dating relationship with someone else.
• o   Predatory stalkers spy on the victim in order to prepare and plan an attack – often sexual – on the victim.
• -        Stalkers can be referred to as “secret admirers”. A secret admirer has an unrequited love and feels adoration, fondness and sometimes love for somebody, without making their feelings known. Sometimes, this admiration can get out of control, which is how they are associated with stalking. Other times, and most often, however, it is purely harmless and is even encouraged in infant and junior schools on Valentine’s Day!