Addressing Misconceptions to Understand and Serve Victims and Survivors of Stalking

Minh Ha

Hi, welcome to Patchwork, the podcast from The Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice, in Washington. I'm Minh Ha from OVW and we're here for the first episode of Patchwork in the new year. We're recognizing January as National Stalking Awareness Month. Today, we're joined by Jennifer Landhuis. Jennifer is the director of the Stalking Prevention Awareness and Resource Center, otherwise known as SPARC. She's spent her career serving as an educator and an advocate on issues such as stalking, domestic violence and sexual assault. Jennifer, thanks for joining us today. Before we get started, tell me about yourself and how you find yourself at SPARC.

Jennifer Landhuis

Absolutely. I started in this field about 25 years ago as a rural domestic violence and sexual assault advocate and I did that work for about 10 years and then worked as a director of social change at a state coalition for 10 years. And then in 2018, Aequitas, which we are a project of, applied for the comprehensive grant from OVW to be a comprehensive national resource center. So SPARC was founded in 2018, and we are a comprehensive TTA provider, which means that we provide training and technical assistance to anybody who is an OVW grantee or a potential grantee. So what that means is we oftentimes travel the country providing training to criminal justice professionals, to victim service providers, to campuses. Pretty much anybody that's intersecting with victims and offenders in stalking cases. So we're in charge of pretty much everything stalking, and we're the only TTA provider that does stalking-specific work. So we're able to help folks with policy development, protocol development. We can help them staff cases. So if they're working on a particular case and they kind of need someone to talk it through with or need some additional ideas, then they can reach out to us at SPARC and we can help them with that as well.

I would say that probably the biggest part of the work that we do is provide even training to folks. So both virtual trainings as well as in-person trainings. And then we also have on our website trainings that people can download and conduct themselves. So for people that are in charge of doing community education, they can access our website and download those trainings and provide those trainings to their community or to their peers in the system.

Minh Ha

Great, we'll make sure we link to that.

So stalking is a crime that some people just don't take seriously or assume that it only happens to celebrities. Can you please tell our listeners about the seriousness of stalking, as well as some misconceptions about it?

Jennifer Landhuis

I absolutely agree. There's unfortunately a lot of misconceptions out there. One of the things that we know is that sometimes people even struggle to define what stalking is. And so we say that it's a pattern of behavior that's directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear. And one of the things that we know is that stalking is really prevalent. It's about one in six women and one in 17 men that experience stalking during their lifetime. But I absolutely agree that there's a lot of misconceptions out there. People think that stalking happens only to famous people. They think of stalkers as that stranger sitting across the street with binoculars, who's watching what they do. And what we know is actually that a majority of individuals who are stalked are stalked by a current or former intimate partner. So oftentimes we see stalking intersecting with domestic violence. And then the next category that we see of victims is individuals who are stalked by an acquaintance so that somebody that they don't necessarily consider a friend, they might know by name. They may attend a class with them, they may work with them. And so oftentimes what we see in these particular issues is that folks either have that really stereotypical version of stalking and they think that it only happens from strangers, et cetera. And the other thing that we see is oftentimes people, when they're working on their response to stalking across the country, they'll say, “Oh, we have a really robust response to stalking because it's rooted in their response to domestic violence. And we've been working on domestic violence issues and sexual assault issues really for a lot longer than we have stalking issues.” And while that's a great platform to have, what we sometimes miss is the individuals who aren't stalked by a current or former partner. And so we have to be careful when we look at our response across the country to make sure that we're working with all victims of stalking. So while almost 60 percent are stalked by a current or former intimate partner, that other 40 percent who are being stalked by acquaintances or family members, et cetera, they also are in need of services, so we need to consider that our response is taking into account that victims are stalked by different individuals and that their needs and the services that we provide to them might be different than if it's solely a domestic violence case.

Minh Ha

60 percent of such a large number. Is there anything that our listeners should know about perpetrators?

Jennifer Landhuis

You know, I think one of the things that folks always ask us and that unfortunately we don't have a ton of answers to is why do stalkers do what they do? And we don't have a ton of research on that. We don't have a lot of background as far as understanding why stalkers do what they do. We do know that some stalkers are stalking the victim because they are seeking affection from that victim. They're trying to engage in a relationship with that individual. Some individuals may stalk someone because they're trying to get back at that person. It's like retribution. Others are doing it because they're obsessed with the victim. Or they might also be stalking that person because they're trying to commit a crime. So we see an intersection between stalking and sexual assault that sometimes happens where the offender who is going to commit a sexual assault is stalking the victim prior to and after the sexual assault. And then I think the biggest reason that we see stalkers doing what they do is out of power and control. So where it intersects with domestic violence. But they also do it because they can they get away with it. And so we have to increase our ability to hold those offenders accountable.

Minh Ha

Can you also go into more detail about how stalking is often a precursor to other crimes?

Jennifer Landhuis

Absolutely. So I think one of the things that we have to consider is that when stalking happens within the context of domestic violence, unfortunately, as a responders, we often miss it. And so the best way I can explain that is when you think about domestic violence, most people use like the power and control wheel to talk about all the different forms of violence. And I think we've done a really great job across the country understanding that domestic violence is more than just the physical violence. We talk about the coercive control that happens with domestic violence and how offenders can be really jealous or really controlling, and that they monitor what a victim does, that they control their friends and family. They're really possessive. And what we see oftentimes is when stalking is happiness in the context of domestic violence, people kind of chalk up that stalking behavior to part of the domestic violence. So we'll understand that the offender is really possessive, really controlling, et cetera, but we don't name those behaviors, which are a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause them fear. We don't name those behaviors as stalking. And a lot of people in training and in contact with them say to us, “well, what's the difference, whether we call it domestic violence or stalk? You know, the criminal justice professionals in my jurisdiction are more familiar with domestic violence. So we're just going to call it and charge it as domestic violence.” And while that's a a strategy, I think one of the things that we need to be thinking about is that naming that behavior as stalking does a couple of things. A number one, it gives us another charging strategy. We can charge stalking in conjunction with domestic violence, and it gives the prosecutor more resources and ability to look at all the behaviors. But it also helps us in safety planning because what we know is that when stalking intersects with domestic violence, we have some of our most dangerous cases. We know that individuals who are experiencing stalking within the context of domestic violence, they have a threefold increase in the risk of intimate partner homicide, meaning they're 300 percent more likely to be killed by their offender if they're stalking within the context of domestic violence. And we know that like 85 percent of attempted femicides and 76 percent of completed femicides had an episode of stalking that happened within the year prior to the murder. But if we never called it stalking and we never identified it as stalking, how were we supposed to see that risk factor within this particular case? And one of the things that we have to concentrate on is working with victims to safety plan around that stalking behavior that's happening within the context of domestic violence. So while yes, stalking is part of domestic violence, it's also its own separate standalone crime. And we have to be conscious when we're working in those particular cases that if we have stalking happening within the context of intimate partner violence, we have some of our most dangerous cases. And so we need to make sure that we're holding those offenders accountable and that we're working to plan for victim safety.

Minh Ha

When some people think about stopping, they think about a person following another person around, maybe someone of their workplace or their home. But we know that something is not limited to an in-person environment. Given the disproportionate impact of stalking and other forms of digital abuse on women and girls, the Biden-Harris Administration’s National Strategy on Gender Equity and Inequality includes a commitment to launch a task force to address online harassment and abuse while being informed by the expense of survivors and a diverse group of stakeholders.

Could you tell me a little bit more about stalking the virtual space and the ways that technology can be misused, as well as signs and signals that victims and victim service providers should be on the lookout for?

Jennifer Landhuis

Excellent question. We know that the greatest percentage of stalking victims experience both in person and technology facilitated stalking. So what we see happen over the decades… when I started this work, I jokingly said, you know, stalkers had to get up off the couch to actually engage in their stalking behavior but they don’t need to do that anymore because there is an app for that. So there are so many technologies that exist that the technology in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. it's how the offenders manipulate it. And so one of the things that we always talk about is naming that particular behavior as stalking through the use of technology. Sometimes when people call it cyber stalking, et cetera, it has a tendency to kind of dilute the word. And people think of it as a harder crime to prove or some kind of virtual space that isn't as real. And we know that victims who are experiencing stalking through the use of technology are just as affected emotionally and physically by the stalking behaviors as those individuals who are being contacted in person. So we see and know that offenders are really creative criminals. So they monitor victim's social media. They contact him through that social media. They may use like location tracking or software like stalkerware, where they might manipulate caller ID through a concept called spoofing, so the victim will answer the phone. They get really creative in their contact with victims. And one of the things that we see for victims is especially when they're contacted through the use of technology, they feel like the offender is like omnipresent. They're always there. They never know where they're going to show up. They never know if their devices are safe, if their computers are safe, if it's safe to get on their social media. And so when we have offenders who are manipulating that technology, as many of them do, we have victims who are struggling to figure out, how do I gather this information and how do I report this information? They're often told to just get off the platform, so to change their phone number or stop being on Facebook or Instagram. And that doesn't stop the stock when victims change their phone number or disengage with the technology, stalkers don't stop. They just change their means of approach. So we also have to get better as responders in understanding that it's not the technology that's bad and victims shouldn't have to give up that technology. It's as holding those offenders accountable for using that technology. And I know that people say to us across the country, you know, when the cases involve technology, they feel like, you know, there are harder cases. And sometimes that technology gives us evidence where we didn't have evidence before. Victims might be able to take a picture of the offender, the people to grab a screenshot or show a caller ID. So we need to make sure that when we're working on these particular cases, we're understanding that the technology violence that happens, that violence that happens through the use of technology is just as impactful for victims as in-person contact.

What we do know is that, you know, individuals who are contacted in person are more likely to go forward and make a report to law enforcement when that offender breaches the technology world and suddenly shows up in person, that's oftentimes the instigating factor for victims going forward to report. But I think we need to understand and I appreciate that the administration is looking at all of the impacts that happen through the use of technology and stalking cases.

I think the thing that would be the best tip would be to say to victims trust your instincts. If the offender seems to know things that they wouldn't know, if they're suspicious, that you know their accounts or their devices have been monitored, it's best to assume that they probably are. And so working with a victim, advocate or law enforcement to a safety plan around this is really essential. So making sure that we, as responders understand that the technology is constantly evolving. And so when victims have these concerns, we need to make sure that we take those concerns seriously and that we're working with them to a safety plan around the use of those devices or the use of social media, et cetera.

Minh Ha

I saw an activity log on your website, so be sure to link to that. As we mentioned before, this administration is committed to eliminating gender based violence, including stalking and other forms of digital abuse. And I'm sure you saw that the White House recently issued a proclamation recognizing January as National Stalking Awareness Month in support of individuals who are threatened and harmed by their pervasive crime stalking and all the while recognizing those who raise awareness and advocating for survivors. As you know, through the landmark Violence Against Women Act and subsequent legislation, Congress is also recognize the importance of establishing a community coordinated response to address domestic violence, dating, violence, sexual assault and stalking.

Can you talk about how a response to the serious crime of stalking involves domestic violence shelters, as well as rape crisis centers?

Jennifer Landhuis  

You know, there's no standalone stalking-specific advocacy centers that exist in the U.S., so if folks you know Google or look for a stalking advocacy center, they don't exist. So most individuals who are experiencing stalking end up connecting with a community based domestic violence or sexual assault program for assistance, even if the stalker isn't an intimate partner. So those particular programs are offering vital, ongoing support for victims. So they're helping those victims navigate the criminal justice system, the civil justice system, if they need a civil protection order. And they're also assisting with and supporting victims as they navigate that physical and psychological impact of stalking.

So making sure that victims know that they can access domestic violence and sexual assault programs and also ensuring that sexual assault and domestic violence programs are prepared for working with victims of stalking. And they provide a vital resource for those individuals. And we're so thankful that those particular programs exist across the country and that victims are able to reach out to them for that ongoing support and for the empowerment.

Minh Ha

So as we observe National Stalking Awareness Month. Can you explain some of the ways that advocates and folks can raise awareness about the seriousness of stalking?

Jennifer Landhuis  

Absolutely. So our theme for Stalking Awareness Month is “Know it. Name it. Stop it.” Which sounds pretty simple, but we encourage anybody who's working on awareness for National Stalking Awareness Month to consider kind of these four pillars that we talk about.

And the first ones to learn about stalking. So understanding that we can all increase our knowledge and ability to work with stalking victims and holding offenders accountable. So doing things like watching webinars, we have checklists and guides on our website, and they can also request additional training if they're an OVW grantee or potential grantee. We can provide that training to them, either virtually or in person. We also encourage them to teach their peers and their partner organizations and their community about stalking. So they can lead a workshop that they can integrate stalking information into what they already do in their education efforts on dating, violence and domestic violence and sexual assault. And they can offer brochures and set brochures and posters out. We have example press releases on our website. They can also share things. So sharing our social media posts, we have social media posts for Instagram, for Facebook, for Twitter that they simply download and reshare for every single day of the month during January. They can also include on and NSAM information in their newsletters, or ask their mayor or leaders in their community to proclaim January as Stalking Awareness Month, and they can share videos and posters and infographics that we have available. And then we ask them to reflect on their own response and their response in their community so they can honor the champions and their community by giving out certificates, they can complete an agency checklist.

One of the things we encourage domestic violence and sexual assault advocates to do is to look at their organization. And we hear from them all the time “Absolutely, we work with victims of stalking.” But then we say, OK, so look at your website or look at the brochures that you have about how much training do you give on stalking to your volunteer hotline advocates? How would somebody who's a victim of stalking, not from an intimate partner, know that your agency would be able to help them? And then we also have information that they can distribute to their community about Stalking Awareness Month, et cetera. So there's all these things that we have available on our website and so if folks go to stalkingawareness.org, there's a whole section on awareness. And each year we have new information to release so they could go to the 2022 section on our website and have all that information that they can easily share with their community as well as their peers.

Minh Ha

So on the topic of learning, would you talk to us a little bit more about the importance of training and educating our justice system professionals on survivor centered ways to address talking?

Jennifer Landhuis

Absolutely. I would say majority of the training that we do is to multidisciplinary professional staff folks who are working in the criminal justice system or the civil justice system or victim service providers. And what we know is that stockings a prevalent, dangerous crime, but it's often misunderstood. So it's essential that justice system professionals have that ongoing training and education on stalking.

Sometimes what we hear from folks is, “oh, well, we screen for stalking within our domestic violence or sexual assault cases”. And we ask “what does that screening look like?” and they say, “well, we ask victims that they're being stalked.” And unfortunately, that's the wrong question. What we know from both research and from decades of working with victims is that you have to ask about the specific behaviors they're experiencing. So one of the things that we encourage criminal justice professionals to do is to embrace what we call the SLII framework, and SLII just stands for Surveillance, Life Invasion, Interference and Intimidation. And it's a framework that was developed by Dr. T.K. Logan out of the University of Kentucky that looks at all the different behaviors that happen in stalking cases. And so oftentimes what happens is criminal justice professionals focus on the surveillance behavior, kind of the stereotypical stalking behaviors where the offender follows the victim or watches the victim. And we fail to ask questions about things like life invasion, where the offender might be making contact with the victim, showing up someplace. We see a lot of stalking offenders who damage victims property, or they may be interfering through some kind of sabotage or attack, so they may sabotage the victim's finances or their employment, or attack their friends and family. Or they may be intimidating the victim, so they may threaten the victim to either harm the victim or somebody close to them, or they may threaten suicide. And what we know is, if you ask a victim of stalking, are you being stalked? Oftentimes they'll say no. But if you describe those particular behaviors that I just gave examples of and you use like the sly framework to ask questions, then victims say yes, they say “yes, absolutely, that's happening to me!”

So we have to increase our ability to ask better questions and screen for stalking and to understand that oftentimes stalking presents and very benign ways. You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot about is that the context and stalking cases is really important, and it's really critical to understand that oftentimes there might be things that happen for victims that aren't scary to those of us as responders. So the victim may get a gift or they may get some kind of text message that those of us on the outside are like, “I don't understand why this is scary.” But to a victim, it is because of their history with the offender, et cetera. And we have to understand that oftentimes when we're responding to those particular crimes that the individual act in and of itself might not be criminal. It's not criminal to send a text message. It's not criminal to drive down a public street. But it might become criminal. When we look at it within the context of a stalking crime. And so we have to go beyond our typical incident based response as criminal justice professionals and look at the bigger picture and understand that stalking oftentimes requires us to change our approach and look at the entire list of behaviors that are happening in these particular situations in order to be able to adequately respond.

Minh Ha

In some ways, Hollywood has romanticized the idea of stalking, but that's not the reality that people who are stalked face. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Jennifer Landhuis

We say, often times when we are working on stalking crimes or we're trying to educate the public about stalking. That there is this kind of social normalization of stalking where those types of behaviors are glorified. So if you think about, you know, any movie that you watch, the message is if someone says no or turns you down on a date, you keep trying and you love them hard enough and then they'll eventually love you back. And so one of the things that we have to consider is that the messages that are out there about normal dating behavior or engaging in a romantic relationship oftentimes definitely cross the line when it comes to stalking behaviors. And so there's that myth that exists out there that, you know, those behaviors just show somebody that you love them and that stalkers are just misunderstood individuals. And we have to flip that, we have to look at how the individual who's receiving the behavior feels about that particular behavior. And so understanding that what might seem benign to the rest of us is very fear induced. We have to consider that many times when we're working on stalking crimes. We have to understand that context behind those things to be able to adequately safety plan and hold those offenders accountable.

Minh Ha

Absolutely. What are some resources that we can kind of listen to?

Jennifer Landhuis

I think that the best resource and would be our website, so our website is stalkingawareness.org and on our website, we have several things that can be helpful. We have information that victims can use to safety plan or document these particular behaviors. So oftentimes we hear people say to victims, Well, keep a journal about what happened. Journals aren't super helpful because victims don't know what they're supposed to write down. They're not versed in probable cause or what kind of evidence they need in the case. And so we would encourage them to use an incident behavior log that just writes down the date, the time, what happened, where it happened. Those are available on our website, in English and in Spanish.

We also have individual resources for victim service providers, for law enforcement, for prosecutors. We have information for public awareness folks that are doing awareness efforts in their community. All of those things are available on our website. Most of them are available in English and Spanish, and so the website allows you to download that information to use it in your everyday work. There's no cost associated with that, everything is free for individuals.

And what we see oftentimes is that people are struggling for resources when it comes to stalking. And we encourage them to reach out to us if there is additional information that they need, if we can help them develop materials. But I think they'll find a lot of really helpful things, both on our website.

We also have a really strong social media presence. So on Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook and Twitter. Our username is actually follow us legally. It's a little inside joke there, so you're more than welcome and we would encourage people to follow us on social media. I mean, they can sign up for our newsletters. We release information. We're constantly developing new materials. So we let them know in that newsletter. We're not going to spam their inbox or anything, but they can sign up for that newsletter and we release a newsletter about quarterly letting them know what resources are available if there's upcoming trainings or webinars that they can attend.

And we also do quarterly webinars for OVW, so they're open to any of you grantee and we offer them once a quarter. We have two coming up here in the month of January that they can attend for free. One is on increasing awareness of their community and the other is on increasing their ability to provide a coordinated community response to stalking.

Minh Ha

That's wonderful. I'll make sure I link to all those resources. As this episode comes close. Is there anything that you'd like our listeners to know? Anything else that might have missed?

Jennifer Landhuis

No, I think the thing that I would like to say is a big thank you to everybody who's listening. We know that we can't continue to do this work without the support of the Office on Violence Against Women, for one, but also all those individuals who are our boots on the ground during the day to day work. We're working with victims of stalking and trying to hold those offenders accountable for what they're doing. And we know they have a lot on their plate. We know that they're working very, very hard and we appreciate the fact that they are understanding that addressing, stalking and responding to stalking is an important issue. And so I want to thank them, number one, for listening and for the work that they're doing every single day to increase the safety of victims.

Minh Ha

And as January comes to a close, the work doesn't end here, though. It's a year-long battle, right?

Jennifer Landhuis

Absolutely. We always say, you know, January is Stalking Awareness Month, but we hope that that awareness and response is continuing the entire year and we're happy to help with anything that our listeners are in need of in order to increase that response.

Minh Ha

Thanks for joining us today, Jennifer.

Jennifer Landhuis

Thank you so much.

Minh Ha

And thank you for listening to passwords. We appreciate any comments you have to share about this or any of our episodes. Feel free to send them to patchwork@usdog.gov. Thanks for listening. From OVW, I’m Minh Ha.