48 Hours had a show on stalking recently. (It might have been a repeat.)

One of the segments was about a soap actor who'd been stalked for 6.5 years.

"The scariest part, to me, is the way he doesn't give up. You know, in all these years, he - does - not - give up." -- Andrea Evans

Showed some of the letters she's gotten, asking how, when, where she'd like to die. She had two armed guards at all times, was advised to go only to work and to home, had her phone tapped. Finally moved; the show was careful not to show her home or the car she drives. Evans talked about having alarms, dogs, "all sorts of things just to protect myself" -- and it was her responsibility to do all this for herself. "I don't get mail. I don't register to vote. Things, just basic, little things that people take for granted, that I don't have any more, that I've lost the right to."

Evans says that in the beginning, she wondered if she was overreacting, but has decided she isn't. A psychiatrist told us "Anyone who is in the public eye who receives consistent, threatening messages from a stalker, should definitely take that seriously."

Then we got treated to information on how NOTHING can be done, legally, about stalkers who haven't yet struck. In most places throughout the U.S., stalking itself isn't illegal. Consulting with an FBI special agent got us, "Everybody has their rights. And these people tend to be very intelligent and they know what line they can cross and what they can't." Example: Postal Service filed charges against a stalker for sending threats through the U.S. Mail, and the stalker just switched to using a delivery service. The FBI agent pointed out that these people often don't have criminal records, which generally gets them very lenient treatment if they ever make it to court for any of the components of their stalking.

Fortunately, the show didn't present only "public eye" victims or only female stalking victims. I'm thinking this show almost has to be a repeat, since their segment on this one guy is a foggy reflection of what some people have warned me a certain local has been doing to me for years. Their segment is about a fella who met a woman at a bus stop, learned of a shared interest in the Russian language, had a few Russian language lessons with her, and the stalking started when she asked him out and he politely informed her he didn't want a relationship with her.

After Rebecca Shafer (sp?) was killed by her stalker, the L.A. area PD set up a Threat Management Unit to act on such situations before they go too far. They say "more than half" their cases involve people who are not famous". The Threat Management Unit's strongest advice to any victim: "Take this seriously".

The rest of the segment talked quite a bit of how intelligent these people are, how they manage to find P.O. Boxes and unlisted phone numbers (without seeming to have contacts or professional experience in finding people), and how obsessive and repetitive they are.

I don't know if this observation on my part is significant, but: in an hour show that dealt with two female and two male victims, and two public and two private figures, both the female victims were in the public eye and both the male victims were not in the public eye.

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