Recorded on April 10, 2020.
In the U.S., six to seven and a half million people are victims of stalking every year. Nearly one in six women and one in 17 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point in their lifetimes. In this episode of In Practice, Rob Wolf discusses stalking in the context of domestic violence and intimate partner violence with national expert Jennifer Landhuis, director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center (SPARC). They talk about what stalking is, why it's so dangerous, and what's being done among advocates and legal practitioners to address it.
This project was supported by Grant No. 2015-TA-AX-K023 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.
The following is a transcript of the podcast [Recorded 4/10/2020]
ROB WOLF: Welcome to In Practice, the podcast from the Center for Court Innovation, where we talk with people on the front lines of the justice system. I'm Rob Wolf, Director of Communications at the Center for Court Innovation.
In the US, an estimated six to seven and a half million people are victims of stalking every year. Nearly one in six women, and one in 17 men have experienced stalking victimization at some point in their lifetime. These numbers are alarming, and help explain why stalking is a crime in all 50 states.
Today, I'm going to talk with the national expert on stalking, who's going to help us understand what stalking is, why it's so dangerous, and what's being done among advocates and justice practitioners to address it. Jennifer Landhuis is the director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center, sometimes referred to by its acronym, SPARC. The resource center is based in Washington, D.C., and Jennifer is with me now on the phone from her home in Idaho. Welcome to the podcast.
JENNIFER LANDHUIS: Thank you.
WOLF: Well, I think everyone has heard of the word stalking, and is maybe familiar with the concept or think they're familiar with it. But how do you define it, and how is it different from something like harassment, which sounds serious as well, but I know stalking is something very specific, so could you define it?
LANDHUIS: Absolutely. So we use the definition that it's a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. So by pattern of behavior, that usually means two or more incidents, and we also use the definition that it's directed at a specific person, but we understand that stalking often spills over to people that are important to the victim. So perhaps the victim's children, their family members, co-workers. And then we include to that might cause fear in a reasonable person, and we use the reasonable person's standard for a couple of different reasons. Number one, we know that oftentimes, victims minimize what's happening in their situation, and we also know that something that might be terrifying to one person might not be terrifying to another. So the reasonable person standard is used, and you see that reflected in a lot of state statutes, because it identifies that context is really important in stalking cases, and it also identifies that fear can be subjective.
WOLF: If someone is stalking someone, are they deliberately trying to frighten the person? Because I imagine sometimes, in some cases, there's a delusion that's happening, and they think they're doing something else, that they're flattering the person or something. Maybe I'm going off on a tangent there, but I just wonder what we know about psychology of people who stalk.
LANDHUIS: I think that's a really important question, because what we see are a couple of different things. In some state statutes, there is what we call a specific intent, meaning that the offender has to knowingly cause the victim to feel fear, which some people see as a little bit of a hurdle, but what we always talk about is that it's up to the victim to decide how it feels. So it's not uncommon for us to make contact with offenders. And offenders to say, "I didn't mean that, I was just trying to date that person. I just wanted to get their attention. I just want to talk about our breakup," but what we have to keep in mind is that the person who gets to determine all of this is the victim, so asking victims about how they feel.
And that's where we get into the difference between harassment and stalking, and what we would typically say is that the difference is based in fear. Stalking victims fear of what's going to happen. Harassment oftentimes, can be classified as annoying or time-consuming, frustrating, but many victims of stalking will articulate that they feel fear, and for those that don't, then sometimes we can look at what has changed in their life to be able to articulate that. So for instance, we might have law enforcement or prosecutors who are asking victims about what has changed in their life, how were their routines changed? What kind of eating and sleeping patterns do they have? And so, sometimes we see that fear is actually masked by other emotions. So victims might articulate that they're angry or frustrated. Usually, they will be very angry at the system and what they deem to be a lack of response, and sometimes we have victims who have a really flat response who, because of the trauma that they're experiencing from the stalking, aren't outwardly emotional when they're talking with those of us that are responders.
WOLF: And you noted that the definition varies among states and that in some cases, it feels like it's a high hurdle. So tell me a little bit about that variety. Is it difficult to prove stalking and more difficult in some states than in others?
LANDHUIS: I think some people see it as a barrier, and really, it's about education and training with those individuals. So what we know is that sometimes people get caught up in trying to prove the intent of the offender. So we have an offender who might say, "Oh, I was just trying to talk to that person. I just wanted to date that person," and a victim who says, "No, I'm scared. They need to leave me alone." And what we will often say back is if we look at the tactics that the offender is using, and we also look at the pattern of behavior that they're engaging in.
LANDHUIS: So when we talk about stalking, there's something that we call the DIF pattern, and that stands for the duration, the intensity, and the frequency. And oftentimes, when we look at the duration, so how long the stalking's been happening, the intensity, or how often or how frequent things are happening, and how does that make the victim feel, added to the frequency, we can establish that there was intent, because it's a pattern of behavior. So if the pattern continues, we can establish intent. And so, it's not as big of a hurdle as some people like to think it is, it's about being able to prove that course of conduct, and I think that's where we fall down as a justice system because really, as a system, we're very incident-based, meaning law enforcement gets called out for one particular reason, prosecutors are prosecuting one particular case, and we fail to see the whole picture.
And when it comes to stalking crimes, we have to go beyond our incident-based response, and really look at the larger picture and the entire course of conduct that's happening in these particular situations. And we're not used to that as a justice system, so it really takes effort on our part to back up, and when we're working with victims, look at the entire picture. What I would say is we kind of get the clip of the movie when we're speaking with victims initially, and we really have to be able to see the entire movie to understand what's going on. And so, taking that time and making sure that we're asking the right questions to really expand beyond that particular incident, is really important.
WOLF: Tell me about your organization, the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center. You don't work directly with clients, do you? You work with institutions, prosecutors, who else?
LANDHUIS: Correct. So we are funded by the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women to do training and technical assistance. So what that means is we provide local, and state, and national trainings on stalking, and then we also do what they refer to as technical assistance. So we help professionals with information, with resources, we can help them establish policy and protocol development, all through our technical assistance endeavors. So we don't work with victims directly, that is correct. We work with the professionals who are working with victims. So a lot of times, people will try to refer victims to our office, and we refer them to their local service providers. So one of the difficulties with that, is there are very few standalone stalking centers across the US. In fact, we don't really know of any, and most of those services are located in domestic violence and sexual assault programs, so it's really helping people understand who the resources are in their community that are working on stalking issues.
WOLF: What is the connection, in fact, between domestic violence and intimate partner violence, and stalking? Because I know they are often interconnected.
LANDHUIS: They absolutely are. I think one of the biggest aha moments that happens for lots of people in our training, is when we're talking about intimate partner violence and we talk about, say, for instance, the power and control wheel, something that people are super familiar with. What we see is when behaviors happen, when partners are together, when they're in an abusive relationship, say for instance, the offender is really controlling, they're really jealous, they monitor the victim's text messages, they interfere with the victim's job, they follow a victim back and forth. If the victim breaks up with them, they go and monitor the victim after that. While those behaviors are happening within the context of domestic violence, we just chalk it up to the emotional and psychological parts of domestic violence. But if we look at those behaviors, they are behaviors that are directed at a [inaudible 00:09:11] that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear.
It's stalking, and when it happens within the context of domestic violence, we often just chalk it up to the emotional piece and course of control that happens in intimate partner violence cases, and we don't identify that as stalking. And then when the victim leaves the offender, and all of a sudden, the victim is having their text messages monitored, and the offender is showing up places, and they're really jealous and really controlling, all of a sudden we say, "Oh no, it's stalking." Well, it was stalking while they were still together. It didn't just suddenly become stalking once they broke up.
And so, identifying stalking as part of domestic violence is really important, for a couple of different reasons. Number one, it gives us another crime that we can charge in these particular cases, but more importantly, it names the behavior so that we can do risk assessment and safety planning with victims, because we know that when stalking happens within the context of domestic violence, it's an indication that this particular case might end up in a femicide. And so, we know some of our offenders who are engaging in domestic violence and stalking are some of our most dangerous offenders.
WOLF: What are some of the trends that you're seeing in your work regarding stalking? I know that over the years and over the decades, there's been a lot of work to advance and address domestic violence, and advance capacity in the justice system to deal with domestic violence and education. Has the same been happening with stalking?
LANDHUIS: I think it is, but I think it's happening much later and at a much slower rate. So what I would say is we're kind of at with stalking where we were with domestic violence 20 years ago, where [inaudible 00:10:53] educate people that A, it is a crime, that B, they should be looking out for it when they're doing their responses, and that there are ways to deal with these cases in the criminal justice system. All the things that we learned through our work to advance domestic violence in the field, and the prosecution, and attention in the justice system, we can use those same lessons when it comes to stalking, we just have to apply them.
So understanding that we can talk about dynamics within a trial, that we can train law enforcement to look at the dynamics when they're responding to a situation. And so, what we see oftentimes, is people are really well versed in their response to domestic violence. They have resources, they have referrals, but when it comes to stalking, they're not really sure what to do. And those same essential elements need to be there, the advocacy, the coordination, the collaboration are all really important, we're just not there with stalking. And I think it's because our laws were a little bit slower when it comes to stalking, and I think because we just don't have the training and resources with stalking like we do with domestic violence.
WOLF: Well, what are some of the tools people can use and have been developed to help victims, or advocates, or even prosecutors build cases? For instance, I saw a log on your website that, I guess allows people to document incidences of stalking.
LANDHUIS: Right, so that's called our Incident and Behavior Log, and it's something that we've found to be really helpful, and the research would back us up in that, in that when victims are able to document what has been happening in their life, and provide that when they're making a report, say for instance, to law enforcement, it can be helpful in the advancement of that case. So what we know oftentimes is that when law enforcement responds to a call, we know oftentimes the offender isn't there. And so, we're essentially, unlike any other crime, asking victims of stalking to build their own cases. We're asking them to gather the evidence, we're asking them to give us that information, which is a huge burden to put on them, and not necessarily the best practice.
So what we know is that if we can give survivors and victims some tools that they can use, like an incident and behavior log, it can help with a couple of things. It helps establish the pattern, it helps us figure out jurisdiction. So we know that oftentimes, stalking it is happening in a couple of jurisdictions. We might have a victim who's, say for instance, getting text messages in her home, and then the offender shows up at her job, which is in a different city, and then he drives by her mom's house, which is in another city. And so, then we have three different jurisdictions where incidents have happened, and oftentimes, those jurisdictions are not coordinating with one another. And victims don't necessarily understand jurisdiction. They just get frustrated, because they call law enforcement and say, "He just drove by my house," and law enforcement says, "Do you have any prior incidents?" and the victim says, "Yeah, he drove by my mom's last week, and I made a report." Well, they go to pull up the report, there's no report there. Victims don't understand that one city's police department might not have the information that the county has, and the county might not have information that the state police had. And so, providing a documentation log does a couple of things. It helps them be able to communicate when they're working with law enforcement about jurisdiction, but it also puts things in kind of a chronological order, so that we can build that course of conduct that we need. Because what we know is we might have evidence of some particular incidents, not every single one of them, but it doesn't mean we can't still use those incidents to prove our course of conduct in a trial. But what we know oftentimes is we're relying on hard evidence, so pictures of text messages, or somebody seeing the offender go by. And what we know from research is a lot of times; we don't take as seriously a victim's account of what has happened. And so, using the documentation log can help victims not only remember what happened, but also be able to articulate it in a way that hopefully, we can use it in our justice response.
WOLF: So you used the term femicide, that's when an intimate partner kills a female victim. What are the lethality risks in stalking?
LANDHUIS: So what we know is there's 14 risk factors, and this research comes from T. K. Logan, who's at the University of Kentucky, she's one of the leading researchers in the country, and she's also the author of SHARP, which is the Stalking Harassment Assessment and Risk Profile. It's the risk assessment we use in stalking cases, and it looks at 14 different factors. So Dr. Logan breaks it up into kind of four categories that we often use. And so, we're looking at the big picture, so identifying the course of conduct that happens in a stalking case, including the DIF patterns that I mentioned earlier, the duration, the intensity, and the frequency. And it also looks at what they call SLII behavior, which are the tactics that offenders use, and SLII stands for surveillance, life invasion, intimidation, and interference through sabotage or attack. So the factors include the big picture, which look at the course of conduct, the escalation, and the nature and context of the threats. Then we look at stalker mindset, so what's the stalker's motive. If they're proxy stalking, which is just a fancy way of saying they're using other people to engage in the stalking, if the stalker has access to weapons, and what's the level of resistance from the victim, and the stalker's persistence. And then we're looking at their history, so their history of partner control, their history of violence and abuse to others, their criminal justice history, and then their substance abuse or mental health history. And then finally, the category of victim vulnerability, where we're looking at the level of fear, how savvy is the stalker with technology, and how vulnerable is the victim. So it really breaks down into those four big categories of looking at the big picture, looking at the stalker's mindset, looking at the stalker's history, and looking at victim's vulnerability. And that can all be looked at through the use of the SHARP assessment, if folks are using that.
WOLF: How often does stalking result in a homicide?
LANDHUIS: We really don't have great statistics on that. A lot of times, unfortunately, it's retrospective. So somebody is engaging in a fatality assessment review, and they're looking at a case, and they realize that stalking has been happening in that case, but it wasn't identified prior to the homicide. It's being identified afterwards, because we still fail as a system over and over and again, to identify stalking when it's happening. We have a tendency to chalk it up to harassment or to control, and not name it as stalking, which is why we say it's so important to actually name the behavior.
WOLF: You mentioned whether the stalker is savvy in technology, and I imagine that technology can be a tool of stalking, whether someone's monitoring someone's social media behavior, or using the phone, or even using a tracking device. So could you talk a little bit about the role technology can play, and what people should know, court practitioners, those in the judiciary, prosecutors, should know about technology and its impact on stalking, in order to be able to more effectively address stalking?
LANDHUIS: Absolutely. It's interesting that you asked that, because we were just going through some data from one of our researchers recently, and what we found is that for older victims, so for instance like the 25 to 40 year olds, stalking typically happens through surveillance, so somebody's showing up where victim's at, or encountering the victim, or physically monitoring the victim. But what we're seeing for the 18 to 24 year old age group, which is actually where the rate of stalking is the highest, is within that 18 to 24 year old age range, that a lot of the stalking behaviors has to do with technology. So offenders are either sending text messages, they're sending emails, they're monitoring a victim's social media. And so, we've seen the trends change as technology has become more prevalent and invasive, that that same technology is being used against stalking victims. And I think what happens is as responders, sometimes we get caught up by that, and we can be a little bit of afraid of that technology, and worried that we're not going to be able to find the evidence. And what we always say is the stalking behaviors are the same, regardless of whether they're being done in person, or through the use of technology. Technology didn't invent stalking, people were stalking way before technology, but it does make things a little bit easier. Technology can sometimes give us that evidence that we didn't have before. I think it's really important that we make sure that our responders are familiar with the technology that can be used, that we know how that can be leveraged against a victim, and that we're not saying to victims, "Just stop using the technology. Well, just change your phone number, or just get off of Instagram." That doesn't stop the stalker. What we know is that 78% of stalkers use more than one means of approach. So if we suddenly cut off access by the phone, or we tell victims to get off of Instagram, the stalking doesn't stop, it just changes. And in fact, what happens many times is it escalates. So for instance, the victim changes their phone number, the stalker doesn't call and get that, "Oh, I'm sorry this number has been disconnected," and be like, "Oh, I guess I'm done stalking the victim," it ups the ante. So if they can't get a hold of the victim by phone anymore, they show up in person.
Sometimes we tell people, inadvertently tell victims, "Stop using the technology," and we escalate the situation. And we have to keep in mind that that same technology is what helps victims feel less isolated. So that Instagram page or that Facebook page, is what their friends and family have accessed. And so, if we say, "Just stop using the technology," it's not helpful. It doesn't stop the stalking, it just encourages offenders to find different ways to access victims. We don't have to be overly familiar with every single aspect of how technology is used, but what we do have to understand is that that technology and that invasiveness, and the stalking that happens through technology, is just as scary and just as threatening to victims as in person contact.
We hear all the time victims say to us, "Well, it wasn't taken as seriously, because he's just contacting me through Facebook," or "He just sent me a text message, it's not like he showed up in person." And so, we see sometimes in being in sentencing and prosecution of these particular cases, that they're not taken as seriously when they happen through technology, but our experience has been when the stalking's happening through technology, it's even more invasive for victims. It permeates every single aspect of their life, and that's terrifying. So we have to take seriously those cases that just, in quotes, happen through technology, because they're just as important, they're just as invasive, and they are just as likely to turn into cases that end up in femicide.
WOLF: What are the next steps for the field as you try to educate and raise awareness, and create more tools to combat stalking, to help people document it, so they can build better cases? Where's the field going, and what do you think needs to be done for organizations, for courts, civil legal services, law enforcement? It's kind of a big sweeping question, so there's a lot of room for you to answer.
LANDHUIS: There is. I think, and research will tell us this. There was just some great article that came out in 2020 that kind of backed up what we already knew, and that is we have to increase our training across the board for every discipline. We also really have to increase our ability to collaborate on these cases. We have really dynamic domestic violence and sexual assault response teams all across the country. Why are we not also doing the same with stalking? It would be the same practice, it would be the same people, we would just incorporate it to the response that we already have going, and all those same things that we've done to improve our response to domestic and sexual violence, we should be doing that with stalking.
So for instance, what we find many times, is law enforcement might be called out to a domestic violence call. They might not have their probable cause to make an arrest, but they still have resources that they refer victims to, they still might call a crisis line, they still might do a risk assessment, they still might have a packet of information that they give out to victims. We should be doing that same thing in stalking cases. Every domestic violence and sexual assault program has information that they can give to survivors, what we usually see the gap is, is law enforcement doesn't know where to send people. They don't know who works necessarily with stalking victims, or maybe they do, but they're not really sure what to tell stalking victims.
So just like we have packets of information that are usually to give out in domestic violence situations, we should have the same thing for stalking. So hand out packets of information when you respond to a stalking call that have things like the documentation log, and a safety plan, and a list of resources, so that we can empower victims to be able to take that next step forward. So we've already made these huge leaps in practices when it comes to domestic violence and sexual assault, we need to do the same thing when it comes to stalking, and look at what we already have in place. So can we build a coordinated response to stalking? Can we have packets of information that we give out to every victim who comes through? Do we have brochures on stalking, when people come into the court office and want to file a civil protection order? Oftentimes, we have brochures on domestic violence, but we might not have anything on stalking.
So using those same things that we already have in place, and making sure that we have a coordinated response, and then looking at our larger macro level, what are our laws about stalking? Are they up to date? Do we need to make any changes to them? Are they working for us? Are they something that our prosecutors feel like they can use, and are we having ongoing discussions between disciplines? I mean, we've done such a great job about working between law enforcement and prosecutors on what prosecutors need to be able to prosecute domestic violence cases, the same thing for stalking, have conversations with prosecutors about what they need to be able to charge these stalking cases.
WOLF: For those who want more information, what sort of resources can they turn to? And maybe that's the note on which we could leave our listeners, places they can get more information about stalking.
LANDHUIS: We would love if they would check out our website. So our website is stalkingawareness.org, and on our website, we have resources broken up by practitioner section. So there's guides for law enforcement, there's guides for victim service professionals, there's guides for prosecutors, and then there's also victim information on there. So brochures about stalking, and safety plans, links to risk assessment. So there's only one risk assessment that looks specifically at stalking, and that's the SHARP assessment, so there's links to the SHARP assessment on our website as well.
So we would encourage people to check out our website, and then if there's additional information that they need, if they need assistance with developing policies and protocols, if they need information to hand out to survivors, whatever they would need, reach out to us. That's what we're here for, and that's what we like to do. We like to help people figure out how can they increase their response. And then there's also some really great guides on there for organizations, if they're saying, "Yes, we work with victims with stalking," or "We pay just as much attention," there's some organizational assessments on there that they can take to see, "Do we really work with stalking victims as much as we say we do, or are we really making sure that stalking victims know that we're available as a resource?" There's some great assessments on our website as well.
WOLF: Thank you for that, and thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
LANDHUIS: My pleasure.
WOLF: I have been speaking with Jennifer Landhuis, who is the director of Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center, which is based in Washington, D.C. And this is the In Practice podcast from the Center for Court Innovation. You can subscribe to this podcast so you'll never miss an episode, and you can also subscribe to our New Thinking podcast as well. And you can visit us for more information about our programming at courtinnovation.org. And I'm Rob Wolf, and I thank you very much for stopping by to listen.
This project was supported by Grant No. 2015-TA-AX-K023 awarded by the Office on Violence Against Women, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women.