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INTRODUCTION

‘IT’S THE NIGHTS that are the worst. I don’t know where he is, but my imagination tells me he is close at hand. In daylight I can keep the fears down; at night I am alone with the terror that he has created. If he rings me every ten minutes I think I will go mad with it; if he does not ring I worry that he is outside, watching me.’

The words of one stalking victim are echoed time and time again through the pages of this book. All stalking victims have different stories to tell, but all have one thing in common: fear. Stalking is a modern crime, a growing crime, a crime born out of loneliness and isolation. In America, where stalking has been studied and analysed far more than it has in Britain, there are an estimated 200,000 people who are being stalked, and the country’s greatest expert on the subject says that one in five women will at some time in their lives be the victim of unwanted pursuit.

In Hollywood, the most famous celebrities may have as many as five hundred people each writing ‘inappropriate’ letters to them, any one of whom may tip over the edge and become a dangerous stalker.

Pursuing celebrities is the type of stalking that makes the headlines, and for that reason it has defined the popular image of the problem. Nobody is surprised to find that a sexy young film starlet gets a barrage of kinky letters from lonely men. But stalking is not just about obsessional fans who turn up outside Hollywood mansions with knives or loaded guns in their pockets: stalking exists in all walks of life, it crosses all age and gender barriers, it knows no class distinctions. Even in California, the capital of the film industry, where the problems for celebrities are much greater than they are anywhere else in the world, celebrity stalking accounts for fewer than half of all cases. Elsewhere in America it is less than ten per cent, a figure that is probably consistent with British experience, although no comparable research has been carried out.

The dictionary definition of stalking is ‘to pursue prey stealthily’, and that is exactly what the human stalker does. His technique may be to make endless phone calls, or to send unwanted taxis and pizza deliveries, or to mail a stream of obscene letters. He may threaten violence, and he may even carry out his threats. Or he may simply, boringly, repetitively, to the point of persecution, try to insinuate himself in someone else’s life. However he does it, he is the hunter and his victim is the prey: he is a stalker.

Not all stalkers, of course, are male, there are some female stalkers about. More women become involved in celebrity stalking – pursuing an unattainable figure from a distance – than any other kind. But the majority of stalkers, more than eighty-five per cent, are men, according to American statistics. For them, stalking is connected with control; they want power over their victims and they can achieve this by frightening them, or – more simply – by knowing everything about their lives.

For the purposes of this book, stalking has been broken down into four broad categories: celebrity stalking, stalking by a complete stranger, stalking by an acquaintance and stalking by an ex-partner (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife). This last category is the largest but also the hardest to define: ex-partners often behave with irrational jealousy, and that behaviour alone does not make them into stalkers. They usually have genuine ties with their victims: there may be children in common, property in common, or at least a social life in common, and the break can be emotionally devastating, leading to a certain amount of clinging on, refusing to give up. But there comes a point when this is no longer the acceptable reaction of a grieving ex. Recognizing that point may be hard (it is hard for all stalking victims, whatever category they come into, but especially hard for this group). When there are phone calls coming at all hours day or night, when there is a car parked outside or a figure lurking in the shadows, that is stalking. Because of the severed emotional ties it is often more difficult for the victim to deal with it, and more difficult for the stalker to accept that his or her behaviour is objectionable.

Stalking by someone who is known to the victim is the second biggest category. A casual acquaintance suddenly starts to take an overwhelming interest in all the details of their victim’s life, they misinterpret small gestures of friendship into large expressions of love, they begin to write, phone, follow the person they are fixated on. As they get no encouragement they feel rejected, and that turns their love into hatred. Threats and obscenities usually follow.

This pattern is repeated by the stalkers who latch on to complete strangers, as well as by those who persecute celebrities. In both these groups, the pursuit is of an unrealistic ideal: the stranger or the celebrity is endowed with all the attributes the stalker is looking for in a partner. Their beliefs about their love-object may go off the sanity scale, but they are deeply held. Gay pop singer Boy George enjoyed the joke immensely when a woman claimed he was the father of her child. He delighted in telling the journalists outside the court in which she sued him for maintenance for the child that it would be a miracle if he was the father as ‘I have never penetrated a woman in my life.’ Yet there was a part of the woman that believed her own wild claims.

For many of these celebrity or stranger stalkers, with rejection comes anger and feelings of betrayal, which can lead to threats, obscene abuse and in some cases real violence.

Stalkers are all suffering from some degree of mental derangement, ranging from a severe psychotic illness like schizophrenia, in which the sufferer often believes he is responding to voices in his head which dictate his behaviour, to simple obsession, when behaviour can be quite normal in all other respects. This milder form is a version of more readily acceptable obsessions: there are football fanatics who plaster their bedroom walls with pictures of their favourite players and whose whole conversation and social life revolves around their team; there are railway enthusiasts who can crawl out of bed on cold wet mornings to collect train numbers at grimy stations; there are fitness freaks who suffer from withdrawal symptoms if they don’t get their daily workout. What starts as an interest and a hobby edges into a position of paramount importance; for the stalker it is the same slow build up. Many adolescents have crushes on music and film stars which are gradually superseded by real-life love affairs. Many people keep their youthful infatuations with them for life – plenty of happily married mothers and grandmothers turn up to have their heartstrings fluttered by Cliff Richard or Tom Jones in concert. But they have a sense of proportion: the rock star is a small and harmless helping of escapism. For a few, though, real life cannot or does not take the place of the fantasy, and the obsession with the star builds up until it dominates life enough to turn the fan into a fanatic, the fanatic into a stalker.

Similarly, a normal part of the business of growing up is to experience a painful love affair, to be rejected, to love unrequited from afar. Anyone who claims never to have been let down in love is probably lying or has a conveniently selective memory. Getting over it can be painful and protracted: adolescents, particularly, are inclined to feel that they will never love again. As Plato said, love is a serious mental condition: love casts out intelligence. The vast majority, of course, do get over it; for one or two, the experience assumes such epic dimensions that it dominates their lives, and the person they love becomes the focus of an obsession.

This is the more rational end of stalking, the tipping of the balance from the normal madness of love to unacceptable behaviour. Many a young person will have dialled the number of the person who is ignoring them, and then hung up. Many will have hung around the college corridors or the pubs and clubs their loved one frequents in the hope of catching a glimpse, even though they know that their affection is not returned. When the dialling of the phone number and the hanging around become a habit, then the delicate balance has shifted.

But there are much wilder shores of stalking, and these are the shores of clinical madness, where the stalker is psychotically ill. Because these stalkers dance to the tunes of their own fractured minds, they will not respond to normal reasoning or pleading, to the law, to physical threats, to anything. Imprisoning the mentally ill does not help, although holding them in secure mental hospitals is sometimes the only consolation that the victims can hope for because, as with so much psychotic illness, containment and not cure is all that can be provided.

David Nias is a clinical psychologist who lectures at London University, and who has worked at Broadmoor Hospital, a secure unit for the criminally insane, and has studied the varying degrees and effects of obsession. Many stalkers, he believes, are suffering from a condition known as De Clerembault’s Syndrome, named after the French doctor who discovered it. Sufferers put romantic constructions on to the most innocuous exchanges, eventually losing touch with reality and becoming obsessed with an unobtainable person, believing that this person reciprocates their feelings. They commonly believe that other people or things are thwarting the relationship. In this extreme form the condition is known as erotomania.

‘All the old clichés about love are true: life-long passion, madly in love, blinded by love, hopelessly in love. They are all, quite literally, true for some people. The classic symptoms are delusion,’ says Dr Nias. ‘The person who stalks a stranger, a celebrity or someone they only know slightly is usually a psychotic, carrying delusions about someone who is in a higher position socially and with whom they have very little in common. They become convinced this person is in love with them and plague their lives. They are irrational, and however hard you try to dissuade them they can come up with evidence of their own that their beliefs are true. They are, quite literally, madly in love.

‘Some doctors believe that erotomania, the delusion that one is loved by another, is a form of schizophrenia, and treat patients with major tranquillizers (anti-psychotic drugs: the name is misleading because they are not related to normal tranquillizers). If they have come to the attention of the medical profession because their behaviour has been inappropriate, they are often held in secure units until it is judged medically that they are safe to be released. But the trouble is that away from their obsession many of them seem perfectly normal, rational people.

‘They try to persuade doctors that they are over their obsession: then you visit their room and the wall is plastered with pictures or references to their victim. The most worrying aspect is that this sort of personality disorder can lead to suicide and the threat to take other lives, particularly that of their victim. Often the fantasies get sicker, more sordid and more frightening as the condition progresses.

‘The people who suffer from obsession are usually rather pathetic, unsuccessful at sexual relations. The obsession feeds their imagination. Anyone in the public eye can be selected as a target, but not only celebrities are at risk. Anyone thought of as a superior could be a victim: women could fall for their GP, priest or bank manager, men with a work colleague, a barmaid or the girl next door. There are quite a few cases in Broadmoor of patients who are dangerously in love with ordinary people.

‘Obsession and stalking can be separate, although they are close. Obsession is a very intense feeling of acute need. There is a childish level of demand for another person, a wave of inner desperation and desolation that makes the sufferer want to own the victim. Obsession affects more men than women. It can be biological, or the result of childhood traumas or problems. The difficulty with knowing whether obsessive love is dangerous is that a lot of people have suffered some form of it: the pangs of despised love, as Hamlet called it, are familiar enough. In some ways it is just an extreme of an emotion we all possess: arguably some of the greatest love affairs are obsessive, frantic and jealous. But the need to know everything about a new partner is not normal, not just an extension of passion: it is a mental disorder.

‘Stalking is often just seeing someone out of reach. Becoming fixated on a stranger is a useful way of avoiding reality – there is less chance of the fantasy being broken. It is a personality disorder, and you only really hear about it when it comes to court: at the lower levels the stalker is merely infatuated, and unless their behaviour presents a real threat to the person they love it does not come to public notice. Many do not even want to make direct contact with their love object, but some do. The sufferer will build up a fantasy world around the person and follow them to find out every detail of their lives. At first the stalker may send polite notes and flowers to try to attract their victim’s attention, but as these are ignored the stalker becomes gradually more angry. The tone of the notes becomes abusive, showing the signs of frustration that lead to aggression.

‘If the love is unrequited, the love turns to hate. Two sides of the same coin. Love letters turn into hate mail, often accompanied by horrendous threats, although these are usually only an attempt to gain attention. To many sufferers from obsessional love, the love is the peak experience of their lives. It is the only time they have fallen in love, it comes like a bolt from the blue. Often the sufferer believes obsessive behaviour is simply a way of getting through to someone, with the rationale that anyone can have anything if they try hard enough.

‘Harmless fantasy can easily turn into dangerous obsession, especially if the sufferer is a lonely person with a vivid imagination. If a man is strongly attracted to a woman he can become wildly jealous. To him she is coming and going as she pleases and yet he thinks she is his. But she doesn’t even know he exists. He feels constantly rejected and you get dysfunctional attempts at taking control of her life.’

Dr Nias confirms that there is no single effective cure. Some sufferers from obsessional love do recover spontaneously, but for many it takes twenty or more years to loosen the grip of an obsession.

‘For many it is merely a part of another disorder. The textbooks say there is no known cause and no known cure. There has been little research into this specific area, but there is also no real cure for a lot of mental disorders. Doctors may try a form of therapy which attempts to change the way in which the sufferer thinks, but many sufferers do not accept or admit that there is a problem. To them, it is obvious that the victim loves them. They are confident that in time the object of their desire will come around and accept them.

‘The law, police, court, prison have no effect. Love will conquer all. A prison sentence is useless, and a stay in a secure hospital is no better, apart from the fact that we can make the victim feel safer when the persecutor is locked up. Tragically, some victims will know no respite, because the stalker’s obsession will be lifelong and unshakeable. Unless he switches his allegiance to a new target, they will remain in the frame. Sometimes a doctor takes the place of the original victim, and they may be able to cope better, but they face the same problems. It is more than an occupational hazard, it is something a doctor dreads. A second obsession is no less binding than a first.’

The life sentence for the victim is a prognosis also given by Professor David Allen, a clinical psychologist based in Paris: ‘Being a stalking victim can be a death sentence – it is certainly a life sentence, spent looking over the shoulders. There is no cure. In extreme cases it can lead to murder, although that is very rare. For the sufferer, there is an absolute conviction that they are loved: every word, every gesture, every facial tic is interpreted as evidence of that. A simple “See you tomorrow” takes on huge significance in their minds.’

Professor Allen’s wife Michelle is a leading French psychoanalyst who has dealt professionally with stalkers and obsessives: ‘I can listen to women and men who are in the grip of an obsession with another person and I can offer them analysis and they can go into therapy, which may contain and control them, but it will not cure them. They may drop their object of desire but latch on to someone else, another victim. Nothing will shake their self-belief. There is no division between fantasy and reality. In extreme cases, life and death become blurred, too, and they become a danger, a walking time bomb.’

More studies of stalking and stalkers have been done in America than anywhere else because stalking has been accepted as a crime in the States since 1990, when California pioneered the first anti-stalking laws through its state legislature (fuelled by the enormous problems the Hollywood stars were experiencing). Since then every other state has followed suit, which makes it possible to determine and examine a specific group of people who have been found guilty of stalking offences. In Britain, some stalkers are pursued under civil law, some under criminal law, and many not at all (see ‘A Paper Shield’, pp. 319—37).

‘Most stalkers are men, and they come in all ages and from all ethnic backgrounds, and from varied social and family backgrounds,’ says Houston forensic psychologist Jerome Brown. ‘Many are relatively intelligent men with a history of inept inadequate heterosexual relationships. They are motivated by fantasies of romantic involvement with their victims, but they have no idea what ‘love’ really means. To many of them, love equals possession. At first, they usually don’t want to hurt their victims, just possess them. The thrill of the chase increases the satisfaction they feel upon “obtaining” them. They’re not able to see the person of their obsession as a real person. When the “thing” does not respond to them properly, they’re likely to get angry at it.’

Stanton Samenow, an American psychologist and author of a book called Inside the Criminal Mind says stalkers vacillate between considering themselves ‘No. 1’ and ‘nothing’.

‘The stalking is the tip of the iceberg. The stalking props up their self-esteem,’ he says. When the stalker is rejected he suffers a huge blow to his feeling of self-worth, and this, coupled with the realization that he is not going to be able to have what he wants, leads to violence.

The predominance of men among stalkers is borne out by British Telecom statistics, which show that twice as many malicious calls are made by men than by women. The only other measure of the gender profile of the British stalker is anecdotal: four out of every five cases that are reported in a newspaper involve a man stalking a woman. It could be that these receive more publicity – women are more likely to look to the police and the courts for help, and the presence of a physically powerful male stalker may actually be more threatening than the continued attentions of a female one. But, even allowing for this distortion, it is likely that we follow the American pattern and have a much higher number of males stalking females than the other way round.

‘Women who are rejected may act destructively towards themselves, or turn to others for nurturing to get over the rejection. Men use aggression to restore the equilibrium of their self-esteem,’ says New York forensic psychologist Dr James Wulach.

Almost all stalking has an underlying sexual motive, although there are cases where the stalker is simply trying to get into the victim’s life for other reasons, usually associated with feelings of prestige and identity: they want the same role as their victim, they want to belong to the same social group/family/work organization (see the cases of Bob and Kathleen Krueger and Janey Buchan).

Analysis of the backgrounds of stalkers has shown that although they come from across all levels of society (with a slight predominance of better-educated individuals) one common factor appears to be an absence of a father figure in their childhood, plus a hot-and-cold relationship with their mothers, sometimes adored and sometimes ignored. With women stalkers (who generally latch on to celebrities or strangers) there is a general absence of any loving relationship in adult life. Women stalkers are usually more clearly recognizable as social inadequates; men may be holding down good jobs and have an outwardly successful life.

This book looks at every type of stalking, from the sort of harassment that is more of a nuisance than anything else, to the most sinister and dangerous stalking of all – that which ends in death.