My experience as a victim of cyberstalking has included many of the aspects described below. — Marta Lyall
Even after my cyberstalker was convicted, on a 2-year suspended sentence, and under the restraints of an anti-harassment order, I have experienced increased surveillance and cyberstalking. He is not allowed to surveil me. Doing so is a violation of the Anti-harassment Order.
In the last 3 months an expensive private investigator from his area, was hired to surveil me. 3rd parties associated with him, sought to obtain my employment records, including email which included medical information, going back 20 years and threatened to publish it. This information had nothing to do with his crimes. Later in an email, he stated that ‘he” requested and obtained this information.
He has posted I am a “Palestinian Advocate” (I am not), to those who would view someone with this orientation as their enemy. He did the same thing before he was arrested; when one video he made for me with a gun was removed from the blog owner’s site as harassment or hate speech, he replaced it with a post to communicate that I was “into gun control”, and then reposted this many times through multiple accounts and usernames. I suppose this was to attract the attention of those who oppose gun control. Many of the duplicates are now down because they were deemed terms of service violations by ISPs. But interestingly, the original post is still online.
He or at times through either a 3rd party or what may be a 3rd party in his household, has contacted anyone with an email address that he can locate who is associated with me, and sends them distortions and exaggerations of my employment and medical history and anything else he can find or create that might be useful to defame, humiliate me, or intimidate others. This appears to be an attempt to isolate me so if more posts appear, I will be weakend publicly.
Even after all of these threats and accuations, he never showed up at the hearing. And as I said, he was still found in contempt. Last week, the Facebook page with my name that was was removed as fraudulent in February, has returned once again.Is this related? I do not know.
I read online that he is now associated with a group that has been known to include extremely proficient hackers. I am posting here, as I do not know what will occur next, and I feel this is my only platform to reference what is going on. I also am hoping this might help others who are victims of cyberstalking. Unfortunately, dealing with this has taken all my time away from my work. So my writing is now only about these issues, if I have the energy to write at all. Dealing with the court requirements that are generated because of his actions, take 30-40 hours a week of my time. I am the one serving a sentence.
Identifying aspects of cyberstalking:
When identifying cyberstalking “in the field,” and particularly when considering whether to report it to any kind of legal authority, the following features or combination of features can be considered to characterize a true stalking situation: malice, premeditation, repetition, distress, obsession, vendetta, no legitimate purpose, personally directed, disregarded warnings to stop, harassment, and threats.[3]
- False accusations. Many cyberstalkers try to damage the reputation of their victim and turn other people against them. They post false information about them on websites. They may set up their own websites, blogs or user pages for this purpose. They post allegations about the victim to newsgroups, chat rooms or other sites that allow public contributions, such as Wikipedia or Amazon.com.[4]
- Attempts to gather information about the victim. Cyberstalkers may approach their victim’s friends, family and work colleagues to obtain personal information. They may advertise for information on the Internet, or hire a private detective. They often will monitor the victim’s online activities and attempt to trace their IP address in an effort to gather more information about their victims. [5]
- Encouraging others to harass the victim. Many cyberstalkers try to involve third parties in the harassment. They may claim the victim has harmed the stalker or his/her family in some way, or may post the victim’s name and telephone number in order to encourage others to join the pursuit.
- False victimization. The cyberstalker will claim that the victim is harassing him/her. Bocij writes that this phenomenon has been noted in a number of well-known cases.
- Attacks on data and equipment. They may try to damage the victim’s computer by sending viruses.
This information was provided by an article on cyberstalking, in Wikipedia.
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