Don't be a victim! Don't be Prey!

After the last blog update, I got such a resonance from women and men who have been stalked, some of the stories were really harrowing and the stuff nightmares are made of. I was aware that it happens very often, I had no idea HOW often.

I thought it's time to address it and show you that there is a life after and while being stalked, don't give the stalker power to take your life away, friends can tell you that I was in a bad state while it happened, my mistake was that I was late in looking for help, by help I don't mean talking to the police, though if anybody would start telephone terror again, I wouldn't even consider waiting until it "blows over", I would be straight down at the police. While it might not get worse and blow over, it's not worth taking the risk, seriously not.

What I mean with looking for help is apart from all the legal steps (do NOT delete anything, keep all the messages, have them printed out as you don't want them to get lost in a computer crash, have a diary where you write down every attempt to make contact, all the usual drill) go and see a help group, seriously, I can't stress enough how important a help group is. Not every group is a good fit, so do shop around. There are also a lot of online resources, utilize them:

Pandora's Project - Resources for stalking victims

More Resources for Stalking Victims

Cyberstalking

Victim Support

Create a log

http://cyberstalkerhelp.org/

Protect your eMail address

Protect your phone number

Alexis Moore - Advocate for Stalking Victims 

Mistress Didi's Article on How To Stop A Stalker 


Read the book: The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence

Here are is a summary or what you should watch out for, but please read the book, it's a very pleasant read and reads more like a thriller:

• Forced Teaming. This is when a person implies that he has something in common with his chosen victim, acting as if they have a shared predicament when that isn't really true. Speaking in "we" terms is a mark of this, i.e. "We don't need to talk outside... Let's go in."
• Charm and Niceness. This is being polite and friendly to a chosen victim in order to manipulate him or her by disarming their mistrust.
• Too many details. If a person is lying they will add excessive details to make themselves sound more credible to their chosen victim.
• Typecasting. An insult is used to get a chosen victim who would otherwise ignore one to engage in conversation to counteract the insult. For example: "Oh, I bet you're too stuck-up to talk to a guy like me." The tendency is for the chosen victim to want to prove the insult untrue.
• Loan Sharking. Giving unsolicited help to the chosen victim and anticipating they'll feel obliged to extend some reciprocal openness in return.
• The Unsolicited Promise. A promise to do (or not do) something when no such promise is asked for; this usually means that such a promise will be broken. For example: an unsolicited, "I promise I'll leave you alone after this," usually means the chosen victim will not be left alone. Similarly, an unsolicited "I promise I won't hurt you" usually means the person intends to hurt their chosen victim.
• Discounting the Word "No". Refusing to accept rejection.

Please, do talk to the police rather sooner than later, I understand you might be embarrassed, especially if your stalker met you on a kink related board, but the longer you wait the more difficult it becomes and the police is there to protect you, not to judge your life-style choices.

Warn them off ONCE, say loud and clear that you do not wish to have any further contact and keep a copy of it, or make a note about it, apart from that, nothing, do not give them a reaction, every reaction, even a "LEAVE ME ALONE" is encouragement for them... You tell them ONCE and then ignore, but do not delete their emails, you might need them if they "crank things up a bit".

Fact: In the US only 37% of the male and 41% of the female stalking victims go to the police!

I assume that in kink related cases the number is even higher due to the embarrassment of the victims, by NOT reporting a stalker, you're not only empowering the stalker, you also allow him or her to feel more secure and continue with his stalking, you're endangering somebody else! Think about it, wouldn't you have liked that his previous victim would have done something and stopped him or her?

The "if you ignore the stalker he will go away" theory is FALSE, in almost every case the behaviour will escalate over time. Don't wait until it gets worse!

Here is a rather sobering fact sheet

Stalking Fact Sheet 

About 10% of all the victims were stalked for 5 years or more. Can you afford to live in terror for 5 years or longer?

If you see signs of somebody being stalked, don't look away, you could be the next victim!

Look, being stalked is hardly ever the victim's fault, in most cases it isn't a complete stranger but somebody you know, be it in real life or online. There is no telling why somebody stalks you, most of them aren't even "crazy" in the usual term of the word, as in they haven't been diagnosed with a mental disorder. So the typical stalker that obsesses over a celeb is actually the minority. In terms of statistics, about 80% of the stalking victims are women, almost 90% of the stalkers are men.

What you shouldn't do is retaliate! Leave it to the authorities, it's not uncommon that the stalker will claim to be the victim and if you try to warn him or her off, she might actually take legal steps and claim you are the one doing the stalking (I was actually accused by my stalker of stalking him among a lot of other stuff, just to try and get others to cut contact with me). It's normal that you want to strike back and defend yourself, but by doing that, you are playing into the stalker's hands! In a lot of cases they also make false allegations to the police (been there), to cause trouble, their goal is to disrupt your life. A stalker in almost every case WILL make up lies about you, he wants you on the defensive, he wants to isolate you from your friends, for a stalker that IS a power game and he wants to present himself in a good light.

They will try to befriend people around you, it's a way of getting to you and they will try to influence them, sometimes they will succeed. I lost a lot of friends, some have disappointed me, but to be honest, in general, even while it hurt, I'm better off without them.

I'm not going to lie to you and claim that you're going to come out of such an experience unchanged, hell, I'm seriously dented, but you CAN get through and the sooner you get help, the quicker you react and ask for help, the less damaging it is for you. It was my mistake to wait too long, you know the "ignore him and he will go away" approach, I ended up throwing up so much, that my throat was sore and I had to deal with mouth ulcers as a result from the stomach acid. We went through changing numbers, you know removing myself as a target, it doesn't help, they're obsessed. Basically everything you do as a reaction to the stalking is a reaction for the stalker, something that tells him he's successful. They might be nuts, but most of them are cunning, they have to be or else they'd be arrested.
 
The best way is to avoid stalkers, however that's often not possible, because you don't have to invite them into your life, they force their way in, but a few clues how you might recognize them online:

If you see them following a poster around obsessively and trying to goad that poster or make snide remarks about him or her, it's a pretty good sign, just be careful and stay away from them.

I can't tell you enough how important it is to document everything, I know it's a lot of work, but you might need every piece of evidence you have, make screen shots, print them out, keep chat logs, phone logs, everything. It is normal to delete everything because you want nothing to do with the person (made that mistake myself) but it is exactly the wrong thing to do. It's overwhelming, I know, but chances are your stalker has experience and has stalked others before, he will know every trick in the book, why give him even more of an advantage?

If something feels creepy, trust your instincts:

 Look, you are certainly not alone in this:

 

Your silence empowers your stalker! Speak out! Get help! Contact the police and helplines!

Even if the videos bore you, here are a few more, seriously, if you wonder if you are being stalked, you probably are. Watch this 3 part series and listen to what the retired police officer says: Stalkers don't have boundaries!

Here is a documentary about cyberstalking, it's quite long and I haven't seen it completely yet...

And here is a somewhat sensational approach about stalking and how to decode their behaviour,  those cases usually end up with murder, it doesn't need to go that far for you to be afraid, but you really shouldn't take anybody stalking you lightly!

Romantic or creepy?

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

So the threats start...

Remember the guy who thought the world owes him domination? He sent me a threat...

Now just for the record, I am not even active as a pro-domme, I see very few but select guys, in the UK absolutely legal, what is not legal would be soliciting, yet dommes hardly walk around soliciting guys... So basically the law in the UK is that if a man or a woman approaches anybody on the street for sex for money, that is not allowed.

As for my website - I don't have one, idiot hasn't figured out that I don't earn my money by being a pro domme but that it's more or less a hobby.

As for the outing and all that, went through that already only this stalker even had personal info...

But guys, just remember, those are the type of people we have to deal with on a regular basis, so cut the women some slack if they really want references! In Europe it's not such a big deal, but in the US, you should be grateful that they are very very careful!

What can I say? I absolutely had it with dickless wankers threatening and stalking, you want to really piss me off, yeah, that's a good way to start.

Btw due to my experience with the other stalker, I do have a little bit of knowledge about internet threats:

18 U.S.C. § 875(c) states: "Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any    communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any  threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined under this  title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both."  From the wording of § 875(c) it is clear that the legislator did not require the element of 'intent.'  Thus, it is irrelevant if the accused claims he/she did not have the intent to produce any injury on the victim; the mere act of sending the e-mail with threatening messages typifies the criminal conduct.

Well, that is the US, now in the UK:
It would fall under the Malicious Communications Act

So in case I hear that the pussy whipped fucktard has caused anybody just the slightest bit of trouble, I'll be down at the police station (after a little detour to an internet lawyer) and I will be very upset about his "threat" - which in turn will have them get his IP, the US colleagues will have a talk with him. Imagine the legal background, he states in his little note that for him BDSM is prostitution and he is trying to solicit money in a thread in an open forum so he can engage in acts of prostitution... I wonder if he ever considered that.

Oh well, one could only hope that the cops who will talk to him are discrete, given the fact that he does live with his parents...

He better prays that none of my domme friends get suspicious calls or even the slightest hint of trouble, or he might find himself in a shit storm that will make Sandy look like a little bit of rain.

You think I'm vicious? In that case, YES I AM. When it comes to wankers who try to take out their frustrations on women and exploit vulnerabilities, hell yes, same reaction as I would have if I'd catch anybody torturing an animal or mistreating a child or somebody with a disability.

Layouts and stuff...

I'm fiddling around trying to figure this thing out, I'm crap with the layout and it looks quite awful, really really not up to date on my technology skills, quite funny actually because I seem to recall that a certain psychopath (actually also might be a sociopath) labeled me as the super duper hacker a while ago. I guess I need to dig out the old DVDs of the Matrix and try and channel Nero a bit more, after all that's what it takes and hacking is easy, I guess that's why companies pay so much money to people checking if their sites are vulnerable... Maybe at one point I talk about the "amusing things" psychopath came up with with the aid of a bunch of prepaid mobile phones, it involved police, RSCPA (thanks for helping me to get 2nd dog asshole, instead of taking my menagerie away they offered us another Dobie, former problem child who turned out to be K's loving brother and the most gentle and goofy boy on the planet, even the cats are crazy about him), fire brigade, ambulances, calls to work (got a better job now) and more fun and games.

I was surprised how easily somebody can harass you long distance, but it's actually really simple, in the US you can buy mobile phones without any form of ID, just cash. You buy the phone for something like $10 and then a prepaid card, for an additional $10 most providers give you unlimited international calls. In Europe you need ID or at least a confirmation of your address, so the authorities here automatically assume that calls are "valid" because they're trackable, well, tracking it to a Radio Shack or Supermarket (yeah, some were purchased at RiteAid) doesn't really help. Now additionally scumbag was smart enough to wait at least a week before activating said cards - duh! CCTV footage is usually deleted every 48 hours... I was quite surprised what I learned the very hard way...

To be honest for a few months I was a nervous wreck, losing your job isn't peasant, having your other half being harassed at work with outings even less (kinda puts a strain on the relationship), but fuck it, our relationship survived and is stronger than ever, I enjoy the new things I do a lot more, I found out who my real friends are and even connected with a few people (some had the same experiences with him) that are a real addition to my life. Authorities realized he's full of crap and ignore his calls now.
What helped me most was a help group for people that are stalked, they and a fantastic therapist helped me to realize that I'm not the single victim, just his current "flavour of the month", the way he went on about it shows that he's got quite a bit of experience in harassing women.

Of course a lot of it was my own fault, I felt for the "nice guy, rough around the edges and socially awkward" shit (imagine the typical but slightly nutty old uncle who's a redneck type) and gave him my personal email... Now there's that thing called XOBNI, a small little program - due to being on a Mac and not aware of what's available for PCs (yeah, duh, embarrassing for such a super duper hacker as I am apparently, make sure I don't turn your toaster into a microwave once I watched the Matrix again - be warned), with XOBNI you just need an email address and you get all the social networks connected to that address, so yep, he had Facebook and LinkedIn, including family and work info and the games began. Yes, I changed all that, set it on private, changed email addresses but the damage was done...

I bore you a bit by telling you to PLEASE always have an alternative email address, preferable an anonymous one from Google, Hotmail or Yahoo unless you know the person really well. And don't be fooled by somebody who tends to be a bit sycophantic, in fact that should be a warning sign. I kinda feel sorry for the people nutcase is getting now friendly with. If there wouldn't be real people behind it who might get hurt, it would be amusing to see how he swarmily tries to ingrate himself with people. I hope they are more careful than I am, because seriously, can't be the savior of the world and roughly 2 years of his psycho terror were enough for me. Mind you, I wouldn't be surprised if he'd try something new...