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A Close Look at Stalking
Mary Lolo


Stalking is a lot more serious than people realize. It happens more often than people realize as well. Anyone can be a victim of stalking. Stalking affects three point four million people a year. Majority of stalking happen to women, but it still does happen to men. It is more common for the men to do the stalking on women. There are a number of reasons why a certain individual may choose to stalk another. Stalkers usually fall into two categories: psychotic and nonpsychotic. The majority are nonpsychotic but they usually suffer from a couple of minor disorders. Some victims are left unharmed, but sadly, in some cases, the results aren’t always the best.

Stalking is illegal in all fifty states. With that being said, that still does not stop certain individuals from stalking another human being. We often hear about stalking happening to celebrities, but they certainly aren’t the only ones being stalked. Stalking happens a lot more than people may realize. According to the National Center that helps victims with abuse, Safe Horizon, “each year, an estimated three point four million men and women become victims of stalking”. That is an extremeley large number to process, and may even make one a little terrified to think about.

To define stalking, the U.S. Department of Justice quoted it as “a pattern of repeated and unwanted attention, harrassment, contact, or any other coure of conduct directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear”. To sum that up, stalking is basically any kind of unwanted behavior given from one person to the other. It may seem innocent enough, but it is way more than that, especially in certain cases. Stalking a person can mean quite a few different things. There are many ways that an individual can stalk another individual. The person doing the stalking may follow the victim, whether it be at the vicitims home, their job, or any other place the person being stalked may go. Other sorts of behavior that may come about is telephone calls. The stalker will call the victim once a day, or in some cases, more than once a day. Stalkers will do a lot of things to keep in contact with their victim, which includes, e-mails, notes, packages, and in more serious cases, they will make violent threats to their victims. They tend to not only threaten the victim, but also threaten any loved ones of the victim, whether that be their family, friends, or pet. Some stalkers do not have any limits as to what they will do.

Some stalkers are more extreme than others. Stalkers can be divided in two different catorgories: psychotic and nonpsychotic. Typically, most stalkers are classified as nonpsychotic. Only in rare cases are the stalkers consideres psychotic. Nonpsychotic stalkers ususally perform due to any anger they may have against the person, jealousy issues, and they may just so happen to be obsessed with the individual. In some cases, nonpsychotic stalkers may suffer from depression, substance abuse, and personality disorders. When a certain individual is considered a psychotic stalker, their disorders are more extreme. They usually have a pre-existing record of psychological disorders such as: schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or a delusional disorder.

Dr. Paul Mullen, a Australian stalking expert, classified stalkers into five different categories. The first one is “The Rejected Suitor”. This is when the stalker wants to seek revenge on their victim for any type of rejection the victim may have did to the stalker. The research that Mullen had conducted on rejcted suitors resulted in finding out that almost eighty percent suffered from personality disorders. The second is “The Intimacy Seeker”. The intimacy seeker has a true belief that they are “supposed” to be with their victim. They believe it is “true love”...
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