WHAT IS STALKING?

While legal definitions of stalking vary from one jurisdiction to another, stalking generally refers to a course of conduct that involves a broad range of behavior directed at the victim. The conduct can be quite varied and involves actions that harass, frighten, threaten and/or force the stalker into the life and consciousness of the victim. Montana’s anti-stalking law (45-5-220) clearly prohibits both physical and electronic stalking. This law, along with the privacy in communication law, make Montana’s anti-stalking statutes among the more progressive in the United States.

INDICATORS OF STALKING BEHAVIOR

When assessing behaviors that might be stalking, it is very important to pay attention to the intensity of the behaviors as well as the course of conduct. A stalker may use these and other methods to intimidate and frighten the object of his or her attentions:

• Persistent phone calls despite being told not to contact in any form
• Waiting at workplace or in neighborhood
• Threats, actual or implied
• Manipulative behavior (for example: threatening to commit suicide in order to get a response to such an “emergency” in the form of contact)
• Sending written messages: letters, emails, graffiti….
• Sending gifts from the seemingly “romantic” (flowers and/or candy) to the bizarre (dog teeth, a bed pan, a blood soaked feather)
• Defamation: lying to others about the victim (claims of infidelity, for example)
• Objectification: demeaning the victim, reducing him/her to an object—this allows the stalker to feel angry with the victim without experiencing empathy.