Stalking Awareness Month--Options for Victims

January is officially Stalking Awareness Month.  Throughout the month, you will see status updates on our Facebook page with information about stalking.  I am pleased to report, that while researching for this blog post, I received 9.53 million hits when I googled "What to do if I'm being stalked."  Although this is still less than the 10.7 million hits I received when I googled "how to stalk someone," it is still progress.  There is lots of information for victims to help themselves.  I would like to highlight some of the ideas that I found especially useful.

Telephone Options:
Verizon has an unlawful call center, specifically for calls that include:

Threat to Life (yours or someone else's)

Bomb Threats

Bodily Harm

Excessive Obscene or Harassing Calls (The definition of excessive varies by state but generally means more than two to five calls.)

Kidnapping

This service is only available to Verizon home telephone customers.  You can report calls at 1-800-257-2969, Monday - Friday, 8:30 a.m. - 5 p.m. Verizon also offers a call trace service.

If the calls are occuring on a landline, you can employ call trace (by pressing *57), but there are charges associated with this, and the information can only be provided to law enforcement agencies.  It is best to check with your individual carrier.

It does not appear that there are many options to victims who are being harassed on their cell phones.  Unfortunately, and I know this is not popular, you may have to get a new phone.  Consider getting "burner" or prepaid cell phones and changing them every few weeks or monthes.  Only give your telephone number to close friends/family and make sure they understand that your safety is compromised if they provide that number to anyone else.

If you have a home phone, you may want to consider getting a physical answering machine that uses cassette tapes or keeps digital recordings that you can also store elsewhere. Along these same lines, you may want to purchase a voice recorder. Just keep in mind that PA has a law against wiretapping and you must inform the person that they are being recorded, unless

"you are under a reasonable suspicion that the intercepted party is committing, about to commit  or has committed a crime of violence and there is reason to believe that evidence of the crime of violence may be obtained from the interception."

Address Options:

Here at Transitions, we can assist crime victims in applying for the Address Confidentiality Program, through the Office of the Victim Advocate.  Many websites suggest getting a P.O. Box for your mail instead of using your physical address.  Fedex and UPS do not deliver to P.O. Boxes, but there are different rules at various storefront mailing services.  You may want to check into these businesses if you expect to receive a number of packages.

Evidence Collection:

If you are being stalked and have received written coorespondance, keep it!  Do not write on the items.  Put them in a bag labeled with the date and where you received them.  Also, it is wise to keep a log of what and when incidences have occured.

If you are a victim of stalking, please know that you did nothing wrong, and there is help for you.  Contact Transitions to find out more information.