National Stalking Awareness Month spotlights shocking crime that strikes Native Americans more than others
By Terri Hansen
Nearly three and a half million people in the United States report that one or more people are stalking them, according to a 2009 U.S. Department of Justice report, “Stalking Victimization in the United States.”
Three people become victims of stalking every minute.
And American Indians and Alaska Natives are stalked more than any one other ethnic group.
“It’s a hate crime,” said Ann Dapice, Ph.D., a Lenape/Cherokee and director of Education and Research at T.K. Wolf, Inc., an American Indian stalking authority agency that works with victims.
“The biggest problem we have is no one who is stalked gets any help. No one will stop stalkers. And stalkers know that,” Dapice said.
T.K. Wolf is an Oklahoma-based non-profit counseling, research and educational organization. They began a Stalking Initiative ten years ago after learning there were so many American Indian stalking victims, and realizing their stalking clients were not receiving assistance from agencies or law enforcement.
“We kept referring stalking victims to domestic violence agencies, but they kept coming back saying, ‘They’re not understanding what we’re dealing with,’” Dapice said.
Stalking among Native Americans is mainly against the leaders–tribal attorneys, activists, artists, and tribal leaders, Dapice said. The only two ways to stop it, she said, are peer pressure, “Peers must tell them this is not appropriate behavior.” The other is the law.
Why can stalkers act with impunity? Less than one percent go to jail.
Agencies and the law usually categorize stalking as battering or domestic violence, where services are limited to ‘known intimates.’ Yet the Department of Justice report shows this group represents only 30.3 percent of stalking victims. ‘Known others,’ like co-workers, relatives, classmates, and neighbors account for 45.1 percent.
And a surprising one in four victims don’t know their stalkers.
‘Strangers’ make up 10.6 percent of stalkers. ‘Unknowns’ account for another 16.9 percent. Some forms of this stalking is organized, gang, proxy or vigilante stalking – “cause” stalking similar to tactics once used by the Ku Klux Klan. Some perpetrators hire groups to stalk their victims.
“There are people who stalk relationships, people who stalk in order to do revenge, people who stalk political and entertainment figures,” says Dapice. “There is group and proxy stalking. There are different motives but whatever it is, it is always a power play.”
DOJ statistics show that in Indian country, most of the violence has been non-Native Americans against Native Americans. It’s not because stalking victims are on tribal lands, as is often assumed, Dapice said. “No one, Indian or non-Indian who is stalked gets any help.”
Worse, some people blame the victims so they’re afraid to come out of the closet.
Men make up 27 percent of stalking victims, “and are just as victimized as women, in some ways doubly so, because police will say ‘what’s wrong with you, why can’t you protect yourself?’” Dapice said the police blame the judges, and the judges blame the system. “Everyone blames everyone else and eventually it’s somebody else’s fault, and nothing gets done.”
Post-traumatic stress syndrome is a familiar term used with stalking victims. T.K. Wolf uses another: Continuous Acute Traumatic Syndrome. Victims think it has let up, only to have it start again.
Some people try moving to a new community to escape. “Stalkers are the first ones to make friends with the police in any community, so often moving makes no difference,” said Dapice. “Stalkers will walk around a neighborhood and tell lies and stories about the victim.”
The agency’s website indicates stalkers, from most to least often stalk by telephone, home surveillance, following physically, driving by home, appearing at workplace, sending letters and emails, spreading gossip and “gaslighting,” a term used when they try to make victims think they’ve gone “crazy,” damaging property, threatening to harm others, breaking and entering, sending unwanted gifts, physically and sexually assaulting victims, injuring and killing pets, kidnapping and arson. Dapice has listened to victims who have reported all these methods.
Stalking victims often report such bizarre behaviors that they have trouble convincing others that this is happening—including the professionals who are formally assigned to respond to them.
January is National Stalking Awareness Month. This year’s theme — “Stalking: Know It. Name It. Stop It.” — challenges the nation to fight this dangerous crime by learning more about it. They’re asking the public to promote the month with posters, Social Networking Status Updates, Sample Public Service Announcements, Certificates of Appreciation and Buttons, Magnets, Logos.
A Tides Foundation Indigenous Peoples Fund Award is funding a T.K. Wolf study that will assist tribes and agencies in providing better responses to victims and perpetrators, and an educational documentary that tells the story of stalking in Indian country.
T.K. Wolf is sponsoring an anonymous online survey through Integrated Concepts, Inc., that will contribute further information regarding the needs of Indian country related to stalking. To participate, visit www.iconceptsinc.com, select Services, select Stalking Survey, enter Password: Tides_Foundation, take Survey, select Submit.
The National Stalking Awareness Month site offers help and resources for Victims, and information on stalking for Service Providers, Law Enforcement and Prosecutors. Visit www.stalkingawarenessmonth.org/resources.
This article is a public service. Contact Author for reprint permission.
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See:
http://www.kens5.com/home/Stalked-drugged-and-raped-Is-it-happening-in-San-Antonio.html
There seems to be an anti-native American bias in a lot of “animal rights” activity.
http://www.directaction.info/news_feb17_10.htm
Fur is only part of it.
Medawar believes that the anonymous offender in this case is quite likely to have been Andrew Kirk or Luke Steele.
The former has been known to roam the streets of Leeds and other northern cities in a white coat covered in blood (sometimes his own!) on market days, to try and discourage people from buying meat.
This is one of the reasons why so little of what stalking victims claim sounds unlikely to Medawar: stalkers and extremists, whether animal rights or some other political colour, share many of the traits of a narcissistic sociopath: they need to have a defenceless victim, but in their own “internal narrative” they are telling themselves that they are heroes for persecuting, or even killing, the victim, so they have to make their victims into villains.
Thus we see comments on the internet to the effect that Gladys Hammond, the old lady whose grave was dug up by animal rights extremists, was an “animal torturer” and it is therefore ridiculous that those who desecrated her grave in a “noble cause” should have been given jail terms of a dozen years each for blackmail.
Well, in a sense it is ridiculous, because if they had been charged with “outraging public morals” the more normal common law charge for grave-robbing, they could have got life.
But the point is, the harmless grandmother, a couple of years dead, is the perfect soft target for stalkers (guaranteed not the struggle!) and yet the magic of animal rights logic transforms her into an evil animal torturer, against whom any crime can be made heroic, even the desecration of her remains.
This line of self-delusion leads, very easily, to killing and serial killing. Any law-enforcement agency which chooses to ignore, or even collude with, any form of stalking, is making a rod for its own back and a yoke for the community’s neck at the same time. Not every stalker becomes a killer, but every stalker has lost the mental and moral barriers that keep normal men from murder, and they avoid it only through a lack of competence or opportunity.
If looking upon a woman with lust in your heart is to commit adultery with her in your heart, then stalking someone is to commit murder in your heart. Those who stalk large numbers of victims as part of a stalking gang, are serial killers in their hearts. That’s not a nice thing to be, and so every stalking campaign is accompanied by a blizzard of defamatory lies, not just to harm the victim, but as a necessary psychological crutch for the stalkers. They are drawn to torment an innocent, and this kind of sadism is addictive, but to face themelves in the cold light of day they have to pretend that innocent victim was really evil, and so adding insult to injury is an inherent part of the package.
And websites like “Bite Back” supply uncritical glorification to stalkers who have done the vilest things: here, even grave-robbers and arsonists can find acceptance, fellowship and even praise!
There does seem to be stalking using toxic materials in Australia, no idea, yet, if there’s an ethnic bias to it.
Logic suggests that if it happens in the UK, USA and Australia, and it seems to have been invented in Canada, then for it not to happen in South Africa, there would have to be a reason.
(Cape Province has very, very householder-friendly laws on self defence. There are rumours of stalking and harassment from smaller provinces in the North of the country; but Medawar simply doesn’t know enough to classify them as organized stalking, or merely a symptom of appallingly high crime rates in general. Mr Mandela was a bit too saintly when he took office and pardoned a few prisoners too many in too short a time. Release prisoners one by one, that’s one thing, but empty a whole jail at once and you’re releasing a ready-made criminal society with its own hierarchy, and that becomes a ready-made mafia parachuted into an unprepared community.)
See:
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/445632.html?c=on
for an example of webstalking at its most ludicrous.
Based on a picture on Medawar’s blog, of sailing boats by a frozen lake, someone has managed to “identify” a complete random person many miles away from there, in Ipswich, as “Medawar” and is now spending several hours a day producing this kind of material about him.
It is somewhat reassuring to know that there is at least ONE utterly deranged terrorist who doesn’t actually know who or where Medawar is!
Could be some months before the hapless random victim enjoys normal life again, though. Medawar has been trying to convince police to watch his back. Uphill struggle.
NB: Ipswich sailing club is on the tidal Orwell Estuary, not a lake, it last froze over in the 17th century, and the Orwell Bridge, visible for about thirty miles around, dominates the Ipswich skyline rather. As well as organized stalkers, we mustn’t forget the chaotic ones!
Question, related to stalking.
Do Native Americans (or any other TIs) have any trouble with a Canadian security company called “Palladin” which has various contracts, including one to secure public hospitals in British Columbia?
Hydrogen Chloride vapour, in sufficient concentration, will combine with ammonia fumes to create a just-visible ammonium chloride “smoke”.
You don’t want to flood your home with ammonia fumes, but if you wear breathing protection and take a beaker of ammonia around the home, you might be able to see the highest concentrations of HCL.
The fact that you will only get a positive from the highest concentration, may help you find the precise entry point of the poison into your home.
Will try and do a blog on this soon.
There are several things that are used by stalkers to make their victims ill.
One lady in Canada describes her cooking oil being tampered with: anti-rejection drugs, which are very destructive if used improperly or maliciously, are soluble in olive oil (and not much else.) The lady suffered all the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome, which is a fairly logical outcome if her immune system was under attack from very small traces of such drugs.
(Please replace the previous almost identical comment, as Kitty is apparently relocating her blogs and the link changed within minutes of my posting the last comment).
See:
http://organizedstalkingandcyberstalking.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-is-cyril-r.html
Does anyone in the Native American peoples know who she means by “Cyril R.” and what is his attitude towards your people?
Kitty Hundall describes a death threat in Swedish, which is interesting in the light of other suggestions that there is quite a lot of stalking in Sweden. It would be unlikely that any international conspiracy that felt it had to attack native Americans, would fail to persecute Saami leaders, or prominent native Australians.
See:
http://kittyhundal.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-is-cyril-r.html#comment-form
Does anyone in the Native American peoples know who she means by “Cyril R.” and what is his attitude towards your people?
Kitty Hundall describes a death threat in Swedish, which is interesting in the light of other suggestions that there is quite a lot of stalking in Sweden. It would be unlikely that any international conspiracy that felt it had to attack native Americans, would fail to persecute Saami leaders, or prominent native Australians.
Patricia’s comments are a perfectly appropriate response to stalking by individuals.
However, where targets are being chosen for their importance to the community and not their celebrity, and are being stalked by groups of people, then it’s likely that at least some of those doing the stalking have been deceived or manipulated into it.
It appears usual that such persons believe that they are acting on behalf of an undercover policeman or intelligence officer and that what they are doing is somehow in the national interest.
In the UK, several con-men have been detected and imprisoned in recent years: one got half a dozen people to leave their homes and jobs, break all ties with their family, and spend more than two years living with him in hotels and guest houses under assumed names, as they carried out all manner of “undercover” work. He had convinced his group of stalkers that they were helping him monitor an IRA terrorist cell, when in fact he had them stalking completely innocent people that he wanted to persecute or rip-off. (The complete truth never came out at the trial, what did come out was hard enough to believe!)
Another managed to convince the entire staff of a Cambridgeshire police station that he was an MI5 officer, to the extent that they helped him prepare a false police warrant card, ordering a “replacement” warrant card wallet for him from official stores. So, reports of policemen being involved in organized stalking do not necessarily mean that it’s a secret government policy, only that someone has managed to make this or that policeman believe that this is so. That particular con-man was detected only because he made a slip, and claimed that his pretended rank of “commander” related to the police and not the Royal Navy.
A police commander is a much higher rank than a naval commander, and only the Metropolitan Police have them. It’s a public appointment, and anyone holding such a post is listed with the association of chief police officers. Had he allowed Cambridgeshire police to go on assuming he was an ex-naval commander (one of thousands and not on any list routinely kept in police stations) he’d have gotten away with his deception indefinitely.
Another, who turned out, eventually, to be an AWOL-for-decades American Naval Intelligence employee, got married under a false identity and his wife spent several years believing that he was an MI6 officer off on secret missions (to swiss banks!) and it’s certainly true that he was visiting banks in Europe a great deal. He was convicted of obtaining a passport under false pretences and a few other deception charges, but the true scope and purpose of his activities remain completely unknown.
At the moment, these are all treated as isolated cases, and they may be. But they all show a consistent pattern and give the strong impression of being the tip of some sort of iceberg.
It is very hard to deter people who have been conned into doing something, especially as they can be threatened or blackmailed into continuing to do whatever they were initially conned into.
Assuming that policemen and FBI agents in the Western United States are no more or less gullible than a whole division of the Cambridgeshire Constabulary, it is entirely possible that there are gang stalkers and proxy stalkers who can walk into police stations or FBI field offices and get officers and agents to give them information, do them favours, even follow people for them, under the pretence that they are working for the national interest in some way. And they may have genuine-looking ID, because they’d conned someone at Homeland Security or the Pentagon into issuing them with some!
Whether they are gang-stalkers or proxy stalkers is a distinction based on whether they are acting for a group or a cause, or themselves and some personal gain or agenda. If a proxy stalker gains control of a large-enough group, then his private interests become a cause and, presto! a new political faction is born.
Medawar wants to untangle some of these knitted webs, as the only way to make those involved understand what they are being made to do. Otherwise, as long as they genuinely believe they are doing some kind of “good” by persecuting people, there’s no way of making them want to quit. And there may well be some deadly serious political extremist groups somewhere in the mix. Again, in this kind of world, there’s no particular reason for the organizer’s agenda to reflect either the beliefs or the interests of those he gets to do his work for him -and there’s quite a big incentive for the organizer of stalking groups to lay as many false trails as he can.
It would be a good idea for there to be some proper research into pathological liars, and whether or not political groups have any method for identifying and recruiting them. (And how on Earth do they control and harness such dangerous personalities?)
To help victims of stalking takes a community effort. To enforce the already existing stalking laws will take trained staff and volunteers to work with the victim, police and DA’s office to document and record the stalking activity and hold them accountable BEFORE they strike. Awareness, training, services and resources need to include victims of ALL stalking crimes. Organized or cause stalking is a disturbing, hateful, ignored and growing trend worldwide and needs to be recognized by the DOJ and the DA in our local communities. GPS monitors should accompany a restraining order for a known stalker. What good is a restraining order if the only one watching the stalking is the victim? Our community advocates must step up their efforts to hold stalkers accountable for their crimes of stalking. If stalkers knew that their stalking activity was being monitored and that they could go to jail, maybe they would just STOP!