Translated material
Why do they haunt us
After the attack on the leading Echo of Moscow, a serious reason appeared to discuss the problem of Stalking - an undesirable intrusive persecution. In Russia, a person who is being persecuted is not protected: a stalker cannot be held accountable until he caused physical harm. The author of Samizdat Anna Bobrova studied the problem, and she has alarming information - it turns out that any person can have a stalker.
Life with a stalker
“Yu-U-Ulenka, I love you,” this phrase was distributed behind her every day: when she left the university, when she went to work, when she returned to the hostel. Oleg recognized the numbers of the Yulin relatives, congratulated them on the holidays. Once he went to her hometown. Then he sent a photo of the house where she lived before moving to Moscow. Julia deleted accounts in social networks, changed the SIM card, even the apartments. He found her again and again. And almost every day for eight years, guarded at the entrance.
This began in 2009. Noting the end of the first year, Julia walked in the center with her friend. They stopped listening to street musicians and noticed that a handsome young man did not take his eyes off them. We met, talked and went for the three of us to walk around the night Moscow. Oleg was ten years older than Julia, said that he was working in the field of real estate. He seemed modest, harmless and stupid to her. After this walk, Julia met with Oleg one more time and decided that this meeting was the last.
But Oleg did not agree with her. He began to call every day. Julia tried to explain that she did not want a relationship with him and she did not like such an obsession, but the man did not stand up. Soon, Julia had a friend, and Oleg disappeared. He was not declared for two and a half years. And again it arose when Julia broke up with a guy: Oleg had been waiting for her near the university, as if two years had not passed. And then appeared again and again.
What only Julia did to get rid of Oleg! At first she complained to the police, but she did nothing but ridicule from the operatives. Then she took her pursuer to a psychologist - Oleg willingly agreed to go to a specialist together. He was generally ready to do everything that Julia would say. He could not fulfill only one Julin's request - to leave her alone. The psychologist, having talked with the client, came to the conclusion that a person is on the verge of pathology. But what to do with this knowledge was not clear, because Oleg did not want to be treated.
Then Julia found Oleg's mother and tried to explain that her son was sick.
“At the meeting, I realized that she was also not quite healthy,” Julia recalls. - It was very difficult for me to talk to her. She raised her hands and said: “Imagine that this is my son, and this is you. There is an energy thread between you, and you tear this thread and tear this thread ... ”. In the end, she told me that she would try to talk with her son. ”
But the conversation with his mother did not give anything. Oleg continued to pursue. He did not attack, did not cause physical harm - he simply dragged his shadow everywhere. Julia's friends tried to “talk” to him many times, but such conversations did not help. Neither screams, nor swearing, nor prayers - nothing worked. Oleg was sure that he and Julia were created for each other, and was ready to follow her forever. Over time, Julia noticed that he almost did not change his clothes. It seemed that he had no work, although he claimed that he was engaged in real estate, and even planned to buy a car.
“After a while, I was so used to his presence in my life that I had some kind of Stockholm syndrome,” recalls Julia. “It seemed to me that he seemed to make my life a little brighter with this persecution.”
Oleg stopped his persecution in 2015 after Julia married. But he warned what would wait until she was divorced.
Who becomes a stalker
As the psychiatrist-narcologist, Doctor of Medical Sciences, explains, stalkers are conditionally divided into two types: mental sick and love addicts. In both cases, the pursuit has cyclicality - there are lifts and downs. If a person is sick, then the activity of a stalker coincides with seasonal exacerbations. But the life of addict stalkers is rather like the life of alcoholics or other people with dependencies: they are in binge or tie. The trouble is that even when an alcoholic is in the eyeballs, he still wants to drink. The same is with stalkers. But “in the eyeballs” they are still able to live an ordinary life and control themselves.
In mental patients, self -control is absent. If they kill someone, then they will not fall into the colony, but in the crazy house. Addicts are responsible for their actions. They are not entirely healthy, but they do not have delusional states. They try to get reciprocity from the object of their passion and, in principle, can show aggression, but most often are simply intrusive. The worst thing that love addiction can lead to is suicide or killing an object of love. Moreover, from the point of view of judicial psychiatry, addicts as a whole are healthy and sane.
There is a certain type of people who are more prone to any addiction. These are people with a genetic predisposition (for example, parents with narcotic or alcohol dependence), with light organic brain damage, with determined character traits (impulsiveness, a thirst for novelty). There are also addicts that have influenced external circumstances, for example, the loss of an object of love or violence in childhood (including sexual). According to Egorov, there are two or three percent of love addicts in the youth population, but in all cases there is a stalker.
Stalking is a fairly common phenomenon. There is no corresponding statistics in Russia, because there is no corresponding article - neither criminal nor administrative. But if you ask friends whether they were subjected to obsessive persecution, then you will probably hear much more stories about stalking than expected. In countries where there is a punishment for stalking, there are statistics: for example, in the UK, according to a 2015 survey , 1.1 million people aged sixteen to fifty -nine years old were persecuted during the twelve -month period, and in the United States, according to 2012, in the same age period, 3.3 million people became victims of stalkers. According to statistics , most stalkers are men. Women are less likely to persecute people, but among women stapkers, it is mentally unhealthy people who are more often found.Who becomes a victim
A person may be a victim of a stalker, regardless of his behavior in social networks and personal qualities. There are no universal rules and precautions. You can behave distant, not to contact the pursuer, but not the fact that this will somehow affect his activity.
Anna Vedita never talked with a cyber stalk who pursued her for a year and a half: she simply methodically blocked his accounts on social networks, and he methodically started new ones to write letters to her. For the first time she saw his messages in July 2016: she opened the Facebook folder on Facebook and found that some kind of person wrote to her every day since May. His messages did not contain any requests and did not implied an answer. The author simply led some of his dialogue with her. Then he began to follow her every movement on the network, every comment, fasting, all her friends and friends. In letters, he made it clear that he knew everything that Anna writes about and her friends in social networks.
The last six months he sends letters every day in response to the English -language newsletter of the Medusa publication, in which Anna works. According to reports, it is clear that the stalker lives in a fictional universe, where Anna is his wife, they are in sexual communications, and the Medusa publication communicates personally with him through the headlines of his materials. Several times, Stalker wrote to Anna's acquaintances to find out any information about her.
“I was not scared until I saw an anti -Semitic message with terrible calls for action,” says Anna. - Before that, I did not know whether this person was dangerous, and now I realized that yes. At the same time, he actively monitors the agenda of the day, he has some favorite characters, for example, he will turn on Navalny and Oximiron, that is, in public, which are now in hearing. It seems to me that he perceives the virtual world as real, as if he lives what is written in the media, or what he sees in series and films. ”
Now Anna lives in the United States: there are persecutions, including virtual ones, as administrative offenses. She can contact the police at any moment, but does not see any sense in this, because the pursuer, apparently, lives in Latvia. But Anna does not exclude that sooner or later he will still turn to law enforcement agencies for help: “He issued his place of residence many times, acquaintances pierced his exact IP address, and if he gets me completely, I will inform you to the Latvian police.”
As punished for stalking
As lawyer Marie Davtyan explains, in the legislation of almost all European countries, the USA, Canada and Australia of the persecution are spelled out in a separate article. In most European countries, you can get a real term for stalking. In Germany, for example, this article provides for a punishment of up to three years in prison, in Italy they can even be imprisoned for calls with silence, and in the UK, after two calls, you can contact the police with a request to take measures.
“In Russia, stalkers legally do nothing illegal until their actions begin to comply with the article“ Attempted murder, ”says Davtyan. - No matter how the pursuers behaved, the victim cannot protect himself from them. She can only contact law enforcement agencies to inform the police. But in ninety percent of cases, the police do nothing, that is, they do not conduct any preventive conversations, do not cause pursuers anywhere. ”
Anatoly Gorin (the name changed at the request of the hero) has been working in law enforcement agencies for more than 15 years. In his opinion, although there is a gap in the legislation on this part, much depends on the professionalism of the police. According to him, in any case, they are obliged to accept the application in the manner of 144 and 145 articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation and begin consideration. In such cases, the application is written to the threat of life. At the first stage, the police must determine the degree of threat, find out if this person has such stories in the past. Further, depending on the situation, a preventive conversation can be held, but from the testimony it turns out that there is a threat to life, then a person is detained.
“There are times when people submit statements, just to annoy someone,” says Gorin. - But the victims of stalkers are usually, on the contrary, so intimidated that they are not done. I know that many decide to deal with this other ways: through some private security companies, through acquaintances, so as not to wait until the police consider the case. Although it is faster, but less effective: such a person [stalker] may stop climbing you personally, but he will find a new sacrifice, especially if he has a mental illness. ”
Until twelve years old, Angelina never talked with a biological father. Mom and grandmother never talked about him, and they perceived the questions about the father painfully. The only thing she knew was he in prison. When Angelina's father was released, he found his daughter in “Odnoklassniki” and wrote. For some time they talked in correspondence, Angelina was interested in the details of his life, talked about school, but then communication stopped-they were interested in both. Two years later, he began to pursue her.
“When I was fourteen years old, something found something and he began to follow me and write all the time,” says Angelina. - I think it was an occasion to get to my mother. At first, the first six months, it was scary, then only angry. ”
Every evening, the father, whom Angelina never saw, wrote to her messages in which he told where and with whom she went today, what she was dressed in. For three years of persecution, she never saw her stalker, he managed to follow her imperceptibly, and this scared even more. Fear alternated with irritation, the girl was picked up by these messages and a sense of powerlessness. It seemed that it was impossible to tell mom, because this is a difficult topic for her. Sometimes his father got drunk and wrote to her threats, said that tomorrow she would not reach home, or that he would take her - and she would never see her mother again.
“I did not know in what condition he pursues me and what he could take to his head. At this time, I just didn’t go anywhere, even in public places appeared with someone, at home-a strict commandant hour, ”recalls Angelina. -There was such a groin day with daily messages and threats, without any exhaust. When you wait for something for a long time, you wait, but nothing happens, you begin to be annoyed. On the one hand, you understand that most likely these are only words, but in the soul - fear: "What if?" I think that in part, this happened due to an unhealthy psyche. He served two terms, and the second was large enough - ten years. ”
Periodically, Angelina's father stopped the persecution for several months, simply disappeared and did not write anything. Again, he appeared every time precisely when the girl relaxed: it seemed as if he felt these moments. In the end, Angelina told everything to her relatives. The family decided not to contact the police and figure it out on their own.
“Mom spoke with some friends, they found his wife, told her everything. Then they found him himself and talked with him-I don’t know if this conversation was only verbal or some other, but the persecution stopped. I still do not know exactly how to deal with him and why he was gone, ”says Angelina.
As lawyer Marie Davtyan explains, such cases are the most common. Most often, former husbands, wives or partners become stalkers.
“Most of these people are absolutely healthy from a psychiatric point of view,” says Davtyan. - They are driven by the desire to maintain power and control. When the police are contacted due to stalking, we are usually talking about threats from ex-husbands, and usually in the past there is homemade violence. Of the ten such diluted couples in seven cases, there will be persecution. ”
If you are pursued
Lawyers advise contacting the police in any case to put law enforcement agencies. It is best to do this at once to show the stalker the seriousness of his intentions. For love addicts, such a step will help to return to reality, it is on them that preventive conversations are acting, they do not need such problems. If the stalker has a suspicion of a mental illness, then the police contact will be the first step to send a person for compulsory treatment. The most difficult situation arises in people pursued by a former lass partner, especially if they are still married to a stalker. In such cases, the victim of the persecution must be secured as much as possible - from video cameras at the door and constant support to contacting lawyers and to the funds of assistance to the victims of domestic violence.