January is National Stalking Awarenes Month, about which no smart remarks or attempts at whimsy. I've watched a couple of friends go through it, and obsession is a scary thing when it has that manifestation. The worst thing is how the victims tend to make excuses for the stalkers when it's someone they've been involved with who just won't let go. Even when there's no suspicion that things might get violent, they end up allowing their lives to be made miserable.
Prosecutor Karen Richards has good adivce in the WANE-TV piece:
"Keep the things that you get from your stalker so that you can turn them over to law enforcement, don't get rid of your recordings on your answering machine, don't delete the computer messages, keep the letters, the cards, the notes, whatever comes into you, hang on to those and turn them over to law enforcement."
Comments
You can turn over whatever you like but that won't stop Karen "tough on crime" Richards from plea bargaining your assailant's sentence down to 5 minutes in time out...
Agreed that this is a particularly distasteful crime, based on wrong assumptions about continuing rights, which deserves to be stopped and punished.
There are a handful of critical areas that our standard education in America simply fails to prepare us for, and the consequences of the omissions are harsh indeed.
One gap in our education is how to act like an adult in relationships. Another is how to run a successful business in our capitalist system.
This topic is even more basic -- how not to become a nut case over an ex.
A guy once started to tell me a story about his continuing problems with "my ex" and joint custody of the kids.
I stopped him with this correction: "What do you mean, 'My ex?' She's not YOUR anything now -- if she ever was."
Maybe others with more firsthand knowledge can correct me, but I've known a lot of prosecutors, and Richards doesn't seem to plea bargain any more or less than the rest of them. I agree the plea bargain is resorted to too often, but it seems to be across the nation, not specific to one prosectutor or jurisdiction.
Leo,
I will admit that I do not know how her numbers stack up to the national average.
My anger is coming from personal experience involving a victim of a gun crime that I know.