Mentally ill stalker

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Victim Advocate, Domestic Violence Services

“It was probably the most informative and practical webinar on stalking I’ve been to, period. I appreciated the mix of intro-level and deep-dive information, and actual tangible ways to help survivors feel safer.”

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Advocate, Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Shelter

“Now that I know what stalking is, I hear stalking behavior in almost every domestic violence case.”

Police Sergeant, County Sheriff’s Office

“I cannot express to you how eye opening this training was for my department, our community partners, and other law enforcement agencies in our area. Prior to attending this training, I along with other officers did not know how important it is to understanding stalking and what role it plays in crimes against women….I would recommend EVERY agency who has the opportunity to attend training facilitated by SPARC take full advantage! Even after the training, they have continued to be an integral resource for follow up questions and assistance to ensure we are doing our best as law enforcement officers to serve the victims and survivors we are working with.”

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Social Worker, Coalition

“…shortly after the training I met with a new client who was being stalked, but I wouldn’t have known that all of the behaviors were stalking if it wasn’t for your training! I was able to respond better to this client and provide her with better information based on what I learned from the SPARC training. I feel like I have so much great information that I can now immediately bring into my work with clients.”

Our Mission | Stalking Awareness & Prevention

Stalking impacts 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men in the United States. Yet, there is no stalking hotline, no stalking crisis centers, and it is often difficult for stalking victims to recognize what they are experiencing and/or know where to go for help. Our task at the Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC) of AEquitas is to “help the helpers”, making sure that the victim service providers (including domestic violence shelters and rape crisis agencies), campuses, law enforcement agencies, and other places where stalking victims come for help and support have the training and resources they need to better respond to victims and survivors.

MISSION

The Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center (SPARC) is a federally funded project providing education and resources about the crime of stalking. SPARC aims to enhance the response to stalking by educating the professionals tasked with keeping stalking victims safe and holding offenders accountable. SPARC ensures that allied professionals have the specialized knowledge to identify and respond to the crime of stalking.

FOCUS

As a comprehensive national resource center, SPARC takes a multifaceted approach to equipping service providers and criminal justice responders with the information and resources they need to better serve victims and survivors of stalking. This includes:

Providing in-person and online training to responders on recognizing and responding to stalking. As of July 2022, we’ve trained over 33,300 professionals across the country – and we’re not stopping until every survivor gets the informed, empathetic, and effective response that they deserve. Learn more here.
Creating discipline-specific materials and guidance. Check out our landing pages for Victim Service Providers, Law Enforcement, Prosecutors, Campus Professionals, Corrections/Probation, Judicial Officers, Awareness Educators, and more.
Offering individualized technical assistance and policy/protocol development for professionals in the field. Have a question while working with a stalking survivor? Want to lead an awareness workshop but not sure where to start? Hoping to incorporate stalking into your organizational policies? We respond to individual requests from professionals to help inform their practice.
Sharing information on stalking’s prevalence, impacts, and dynamics – including how it affects marginalized communities and intersects with other crimes and victimizations. Stalking impacts every community and often co-occurs with other crimes and victimizations. Learn more from our infographics, fact sheets, videos, and social media.
Empowering stalking awareness efforts through National Stalking Awareness Month and resources for awareness educators. We are committed to elevating the discourse on stalking – in our field and in the general public. Our annual campaign is easy to share and adapt for your community, and our awareness programs are ready to implement year-round.

WHO WE SERVE

SPARC provides training and technical assistance to U.S. Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) grantees and potential grantees. Our trainings and resources are geared towards domestic and/or sexual violence response agencies, law enforcement, prosecutors, court personnel, corrections/probation, campus professionals (Title IX/student conduct), mental health providers, social workers, and others who help keep victims safe and hold offenders accountable.

SPARC is not a direct service provider and does not serve victims or survivors of stalking. When survivors contact us for help, all we can do is refer them elsewhere. If you’re experiencing stalking, contact Victim Connect for a referral to a local resource.

SPARC staff do NOT directly provide stalking awareness trainings for students and/or the general public. If you are interested in leading a public awareness training for a campus or community event, please see our public awareness workshops and activity ideas and/or connect with a local service provider.

SPARC is a project of AEquitas funded by the Department of Justice, Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). This project was supported by Grant No. 2017-TA-AX-K074.

Connect with SPARC

If you are a victim or survivor of stalking, please see our “What to Do if You are Being Stalked” page. SPARC cannot provide direct support to victims.

For individualized technical assistance, e-mail tta@stalkingawareness. org
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Why are they following us | My friend, yes you are a transformer

Protection

Text: Anna Bobrova

Illustrations: Polina Mityaeva

November 03, 2017

After the attack on the host of "Ekho Moskvy", there was a serious reason to discuss the problem of stalking - unwanted obsessive harassment. In Russia, a person who is persecuted is not protected: a stalker cannot be held accountable until he has caused physical harm. The author of samizdat, Anna Bobrova, has studied the problem, and she has disturbing information - it turns out that any person can start a stalker.

Life with a stalker

“Yoo-ulenka, I love you,” this phrase was heard every day behind her back: when she left the university, when she went to work, when she returned to the hostel. Oleg found out the numbers of Yulia's relatives, congratulated them on the holidays. Once I went to her hometown. Then he sent a photograph of the house where she lived before moving to Moscow. Julia deleted social media accounts, changed SIM cards, even apartments. He found her again and again. And almost every day for eight years he was on guard at the entrance.

This started in 2009. Celebrating the end of the first year, Yulia walked around the center with her friend. They stopped to listen to the street musicians and noticed that the handsome young man was staring at them. We met, started talking and the three of us went for a walk around Moscow at night. Oleg was ten years older than Yulia, he said that he works in real estate. He seemed to her modest, harmless and stupid. After this walk, Yulia met Oleg one more time and decided that this meeting was their last.

But Oleg did not agree with her. He started calling every day. Julia tried to explain that she did not want a relationship with him and she did not like such obsession, but the man did not let up. Soon Yulia had a friend, and Oleg disappeared. He didn't show up for two and a half years. And it arose again when Yulia broke up with her boyfriend: Oleg was waiting for her near the university, as if two years had not passed. And then he showed up again and again.

No matter what Yulia did to get rid of Oleg! At first, she complained to the police, but she got nothing but ridicule from the operatives. Then she took her pursuer to a psychologist - Oleg willingly agreed to go to a specialist together. In general, he was ready to do everything that Julia would say. He could not fulfill only one Yulina request - to leave her alone. The psychologist, after talking with the client, came to the conclusion that the 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 Yulia found Oleg's mother and tried to explain that her son was ill.

“At the meeting, I realized that she was also not quite healthy,” recalls Yulia. It was very difficult for me to talk to her. She raised her hands and said: “Just imagine that this is my son, and this is you. There is an energy thread between you, and you are tearing and tearing this thread all the time...”. In the end, she told me that she would try to talk to her son.”

But the conversation with my mother did not give anything either. Oleg continued to pursue. Didn't attack, didn't cause physical harm - just dragged around like a shadow. Yulia's friends tried to “talk” with him many times, but such conversations did not help either. No shouting, no swearing, no pleading—nothing worked. Oleg was sure that he and Yulia were made for each other, and was ready to follow her forever. Over time, Julia noticed that he hardly changes clothes. He didn't seem to have a job, even though he claimed to be a real estate agent and even planned to buy a car.

“After a while, I got so used to his presence in my life that I got some kind of Stockholm syndrome,” Yulia recalls. “It seemed to me that with this persecution, he seemed to make my life a little brighter.”

Oleg stopped his persecution in 2015 after Yulia got married. But he warned that he would wait until she divorced.

Who becomes a stalker

As psychiatrist-narcologist Alexei Egorov explains, stalkers are conditionally divided into two types: mental patients and love addicts. In both cases, the pursuit is cyclical - there are ups and downs. If a person is sick, then the activity of the stalker coincides with seasonal exacerbations. But the life of stalker addicts is more like the life of alcoholics or other people with addictions: they are drunk or drunk. The trouble is that even when an alcoholic is in the eyeballs, he still wants to drink. It's the same with stalkers. But "in the eyeballs" they are still able to live a normal life and control themselves.

Mentally ill people lack self-control. If they kill someone, they will end up not in a colony, but in a madhouse. Addicts are responsible for their actions. They are not completely healthy, but they do not have delusional states. They try to achieve reciprocity from the object of their passion and, in principle, they can show aggression, but most often they are simply obsessive. The worst thing that a love addiction can lead to is suicide or the murder of a love object. At the same time, from the point of view of forensic psychiatry, addicts are generally healthy and sane.

There is a certain type of person who is more prone to addiction of any kind. These are people with a genetic predisposition (for example, parents with drug or alcohol addiction), with mild organic brain damage, with certain character traits (impulsiveness, thirst for novelty). There are also addicts who were influenced by external circumstances, such as the loss of a love object or childhood abuse (including sexual abuse). According to Egorov, there are only two or three percent of love addicts in the youth population, but not in all cases there is stalkerism.

Stalking is quite common. There are no relevant statistics in Russia, because there is no corresponding article either criminal or administrative. But if you ask people you know if they've been harassed, you'll probably hear more stories about stalking than you might expect. In countries where there are penalties for stalking, there are also statistics: for example, in the UK, according to a 2015 survey, 1.1 million people aged sixteen to fifty-nine were harassed over a twelve-month period, and in the United States, according to 2012 year, in the same age range, 3.3 million people became victims of stalkers. According to statistics, the majority of stalkers are men. Women are less likely to persecute people, but among female stalkers, mentally unhealthy people are more common.

Who becomes a victim

A person can be a victim of a stalker, regardless of their behavior in social networks and personal qualities. There are no universal rules and precautions here. You can behave detachedly, not get in touch with the pursuer, but it is not a fact that this will somehow affect his activity.

Anna Veduta never communicated with the cyberstalker who pursued her for a year and a half: she just methodically blocked his accounts on social networks, and he methodically started new ones to write letters to her. She first saw his messages in July 2016: she opened the “Other” folder on Facebook and found that a person had written to her every day since May. His messages did not contain any requests and did not imply a response. The author was just having some kind of dialogue with her. Then he began to follow her every movement on the network, every comment, post, all her acquaintances and friends. In letters, he made it clear that he knew everything that Anna and her friends write about on social networks.

For the last six months, he has been sending letters every day in response to the English-language mailing list of the Meduza publication where Anna works. It is clear from the reports that the stalker lives in a fictional universe where Anna is his wife, they are in a sexual relationship, and Meduza communicates personally with him through the headlines of their materials. Several times the stalker wrote to Anna's acquaintances to find out some information about her.

“Before that, I didn’t know if this person was dangerous, but now I understand that yes”

“I wasn't scared until I saw an anti-Semitic message with a terrible call to action,” says Anna. “Before that, I didn’t know if this person was dangerous, but now I understand that yes. At the same time, he actively follows the agenda, he has some favorite characters, for example, he turns on Navalny and Oksimiron, that is, on people who are now on the buzz. It seems to me that he perceives the virtual world as real, as if he lives what they write about in the media, or what he sees in series and films.

Now Anna lives in the USA where harassment, including virtual ones, is considered as an administrative offense. She can contact the police at any time, but she sees no point in this, because the persecutor, apparently, lives in Latvia. But Anna does not rule out that sooner or later she will turn to law enforcement agencies for help: “He gave away his place of residence many times, his acquaintances got his exact address by IP, and if he finally gets me, I will inform the Latvian police.”

How is stalking punished

As lawyer Mari Davtyan explains, in the legislation of almost all European countries, the USA, Canada and Australia, persecution is spelled out in a separate article. In most European countries, you can get a real prison sentence for stalking. In Germany, for example, such an article provides for punishment of up to three years in prison, in Italy they can even be imprisoned for silent calls, and in the UK, after two calls, you can contact the police with a request to take action.

“In Russia, stalkers do not legally commit anything illegal until their actions begin to comply with the article “attempted murder,” says Davtyan. “No matter how the persecutors behave, the victim cannot protect himself from them. She can only contact law enforcement to inform the police. But in ninety percent of cases, the police do nothing, that is, they do not conduct any preventive conversations, they do not call the persecutors anywhere.”

Anatoly Gorin (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, a lot depends on the professionalism of the police officers. According to him, in any case, they are obliged to accept the application in accordance with Articles 144 and 145 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation and begin consideration. In such cases, the application is written on the threat of life. At the first stage, the police must determine the degree of threat, find out if this person has similar stories in the past. Further, depending on the situation, a preventive conversation can be held, but if it turns out from the testimony that there is a threat to life, then the person is detained.

“There are times when people apply just to annoy someone,” says Gorin. - But the victims of stalkers are usually, on the contrary, so intimidated that they don’t do it. I know that many decide to deal with this in other ways: through some private security firms, through acquaintances, so as not to wait for the police to consider the case. Although it is faster, it is less effective: such a person [stalker] may stop interfering with you personally, but will find a new victim, especially if he has a mental illness.”

"It was such a groundhog day with daily messages and threats"

Until the age of twelve, Angelina had never communicated with her biological father. Mom and grandmother never talked about him, and they perceived questions about their father painfully. The only thing she knew was that he was in prison. When Angelina's father was released, he found his daughter in Odnoklassniki and wrote. For some time they communicated by correspondence, Angelina was interested in the details of his life, talked about the school, but then the communication stopped - both of them were no longer interested. Two years later, he began to pursue her.

“When I was fourteen, something came over him and he started following me and writing all the time,” says Angelina. — I think it was an excuse to get to my mom. At first, for the first six months, it was scary, then it only made me angry.”

Every evening her father, whom Angelina had never seen, wrote her messages telling her where and with whom she went that day, what she was wearing. For three years of persecution, she never saw her stalker, he managed to follow her unnoticed, and this frightened her even more. Fear alternated with irritation, the girl was pissed off by these messages and a sense of powerlessness. It seemed that it was impossible to tell my mother, because this is a difficult topic for her. Sometimes her father would get drunk and write threats to her, saying that tomorrow she would not reach the house, or that he would take her away - and she would never see her mother again.

“I didn't know in what state he was following me and what he might think. At that time, I just didn’t go anywhere alone, even in public places I appeared with someone, at home there was a strict curfew, ”recalls Angelina. “It was such a groundhog day with daily messages and threats, without any exhaust. When you wait for something for a long time, you wait, but nothing happens, you start to get annoyed. On the one hand, you understand that most likely these are just words, but in your soul there is fear: “What if?” I think that partly it happened to him because of an unhealthy psyche. He served two terms, and the second was quite long - ten years.

From time to time, Angelina's father stopped the persecution for several months, simply disappeared and did not write anything. He appeared again every time exactly when the girl relaxed: it seemed as if he felt these moments. In the end, Angelina told her relatives everything. The family decided not to go to the police and figure it out on their own.

“Mom talked to some friends, they found his wife, told her everything. Then they found him himself and talked to him - I don’t know if this conversation was only verbal or something else, but the persecution stopped. I still don’t know exactly how they dealt with him and why he disappeared,” says Angelina.

As lawyer Mari Davtyan explains, such cases are the most common. Most often, ex-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 a desire to maintain power and control. When the police are contacted because of stalking, it is usually about threats from ex-husbands, and usually there is domestic violence in the past. Out of ten such divorced couples, in seven cases there will be persecution.”

If you are being followed

Lawyers are advised to contact the police in any case in order to notify law enforcement agencies. It is best to do this immediately 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 work, they do not need such problems. If the stalker has a suspicion of a mental illness, then contacting the police will be the first step in sending a person for compulsory treatment. The most difficult situation arises for people who are stalked by an abusive ex-partner, especially if they are still married to a stalker. In such cases, the victim of persecution needs to protect himself as much as possible - from video cameras at the door and constant escort to contacting lawyers and funds to help victims of domestic violence.

What is stalking - examples in Russia - October 16, 2020

Society

October 16, 2020, 11:32

104451

25 commentsphoto author Igor Ivanko/Kommersant

Non-random encounters on the street, in the subway, at the front door, different calls and frightened acquaintances - in such an atmosphere the family of a St. Petersburg doctor has been living for nine years. The reaction of the police is predictable.

In Russia, the phenomenon of stalking was publicly discussed in October 2017, when a man with a knife attacked journalist Tatyana Felgenhauer in the editorial office of Ekho Moskvy. With a wound in the neck, the girl was taken to the hospital in serious condition. The attacker was detained by the security of the radio station. Boris Grits, 48, told police that he had a “telepathic connection” with Felgenhauer, but it became too intrusive. Gritz's acquaintances recalled that a few months before the attack, he often and inappropriately spoke about the journalist, and meeting with her became a fixed idea for him. The court sent the man for compulsory treatment.

Stalking is unwanted, obsessive attention to one person by another person or group of people, expressed in the pursuit of the victim, surveillance of her.

The story of Olga Borisoglebskaya began long before the Moscow tragedy and continues to this day. Her husband, a general practitioner, observed the patient Maria in 2011. When the reasons for treatment ended and the appointments stopped, she continued to go to the clinic. And then she appeared in the courtyard of the house on Moskovsky Prospekt, where the doctor lived with his wife Olga.

“She came up to me on the street while I was walking my dog and asked me to ask a question. I saw her for the first time and just shook my head. I went further, ”says Olga.

After that, meetings with Maria became more frequent. They could "accidentally" collide several times a day: on the street, in the subway, at an exhibition. The woman simply looked from afar, could wave her hand in greeting or come up with a question. For example, she was interested in why she lives so badly.

After a few months of such a total presence of the "third person" Olga decided to go to a nearby police stronghold. She was interested in whether she could write a statement so that someone would talk to Maria and ask her to leave. But the policeman only offered to send the pursuer away and live in peace, not paying attention to her. Like, she'll leave.

But Maria did not lag behind. She, according to Borisoglebskaya, took out bags of garbage that the family threw out and either laid it out in the front door or knocked on the door to “return their things.” Then the home phone calls began at three in the morning asking if the spouses knew why she couldn't sleep. The woman always loomed somewhere in the neighborhood at meetings with acquaintances, and then approached them with a question about what they were talking with Borisoglebskaya, or offered to invest in an interesting project.

“After this, many people simply reduced our communication to nothing. Some laughed, they say, what will she do, and we are more crazy that we react to it like that. Once, after a meeting and such a comment, my friend suddenly called me. She was frightened, since Maria came after her from the front door of the house, called out and began to mutter something, ”Olga’s voice trembles at that moment.

Note that Maria is quite social: now she works in a famous theater, and earlier she was a mediator.

Sometimes Mary was gone for days or weeks, but no more. And then the pressure increased. She was already catching up with Olga in a car and honked to her, sometimes cutting off the doctor's wife's car.

And then one day the stalker bought an apartment in the same house as the spouses, “windows to windows”. Her car was now always parked at their front door. And she herself started a conversation about cohabitation. “I want to live with you. On any conditions, ”recalls Olga. Then she invited Borisoglebskaya to “move over” and vacate the position of the doctor’s wife for her: “In recent years, she has already smiled confidently at meetings. And she said: “What will you do to me?” Or suggested: “Do you want to hit me? Yes, beat this nonsense out of me!”

The family nevertheless filed a complaint with the police. But the precinct came to talk with the persecutor only after a complaint to the prosecutor's office. It did not bring the expected result. Olga and her husband ensured that Maria was examined in the district PND. She was diagnosed with the disease, but found no reason not only for hospitalization, but also to deprive her of her driver's license.

Olga and her husband moved out of their apartment on Moskovsky and settled in a dacha in the Leningrad region. They are in the city for work, but they come to the apartment like thieves at night.

“I have already learned to count her steps. I'm going to walk the dog, I think I won't go like that, I'll go around through another block. Then I look, and I did the right thing, her car is standing there, ”Olga describes the realities of her life.

Stalking, according to the chief freelance psychiatrist of St. Petersburg Alexander Sofronov , is not officially recognized as a mental disorder, but this does not make it any less dangerous.

“Stalking, as the obsessive unwanted attention of one person to the life of another, is a behavioral phenomenon. Very often, stalking is manifested not just by attention, but by outright persecution. This is how faces—objects of unwanted attention—determine what happens to them. It's pretty hard to qualify. In some cases, there may be a rational calculation that has clearly defined goals. For example, a person chooses stalking as a line of behavior for the purpose of extortion, blackmail, revenge, etc. Close to stalking is domestic violence, which, in my personal opinion, is its variety. Of course, the "pursuer" has certain personality traits, but these traits may not reach a painful level. There may be a harmless obsessive attention to the life of another person. For example, a young man in love seeks to attract the attention of a girl who does not reciprocate his feelings. At the same time, he closely studies her personal life in detail, ”the chief city psychiatrist is sure.

Irina from St. Petersburg, for example, faced this kind of persecution. Her ex-boyfriend refused to accept the breakup. He wrote her thousands of SMS, met her at the house, left gifts under the door. When her new lover decided to talk to him like a man, they first got into a fight, then they drank. The next morning, Irina received an offer to "live together." Irina broke off relations with both. And then I found a job in Moscow and left.

Stalking, Sofronov is sure, as a disease state can be both independent, having its own mechanism of occurrence, and be one of the manifestations of a mental illness ranging from personality disorder to severe psychosis.

“In recent years, independent or otherwise isolated forms of stalking have become most widespread. These forms have manifestations that can be considered within the framework of addictive (dependent) behavior. A person in this case may report an irresistible desire to persecute another and, most importantly, that he suffers from inattention to himself as an object of persecution or receives satisfaction from the obvious suffering of his victim. Outwardly, such a person can make a completely normal impression on others and correspond to other norms of behavior in society, ”says Alexander Genrikhovich.

Philologist Alexei encountered stalking at the university. One of the teachers gave him too much attention. She could begin to praise him in front of the group, belittling the successes of others, or, on the contrary, point out a mistake, for which, again, all classmates had to answer. The woman called and wrote to the guy, but he did not know how to stop the flow of attention from the respected teacher. After receiving the diploma, Alexei was forced to go to the clinic of neuroses. Now he teaches at one of the universities in St. Petersburg.

“It is known from literary sources that active persecution can last from one and a half years or more. The dynamics of its development and reduction is not clearly verified. There is a description of cases of spontaneous cessation of persecution, however, there are also reports of cases of an increase in the intensity of persecution with the appearance of dangerous behavioral tendencies for others.

However, this development is more typical for people with serious mental disorders. Despite the fact that a number of specialists find painful manifestations in the phenomenon of stalking, in modern psychiatric classifications, it is not yet included as an independent mental disorder . With verified mental illness, the phenomenon of persecution has the same features, but coexists with other mental disorders. The latter in their manifestations depend on the disease itself, which the “persecutor” suffers from.

There are no reliable statistics on the occurrence of the phenomenon in certain mental disorders. It appears to be more common in some forms of personality disorder. In turn, personality disorders have hard-to-recognize edge forms, which makes it even more difficult to diagnose and qualify this phenomenon. In psychosis, victim stalking is relatively rare. It is typical, for example, for the "delusion of love charm", when a sick person seeks to achieve location, being sure that the object of his attention is in love with him. The persecution of the victim as part of pathological jealousy in a person with a delusional disorder should be attributed to a potentially dangerous form, ”Sofronov is sure.

According to him, the “persecutors” themselves very rarely voluntarily seek medical help. It is problematic to organize medical care for them on an involuntary basis, since under Russian law it is necessary to prove to the court the obvious danger of a person with a mental disorder to himself and others.

In other words, reports of a persecuted person about letters, gifts, waiting at the entrance, surveillance, including in a car, comments on social networks on the Internet, and so on, do not allow a psychiatrist to conduct an involuntary examination and prescribe treatment without a court order. In itself, a psychiatric diagnosis is not grounds for involuntary intervention. In addition, as noted above, stalking itself has not yet been officially recognized as a mental disorder.

A doctor can examine a patient without a court decision only in case of acute psychosis, but the decision on involuntary hospitalization is still made by the court.

“If a person assesses the persecution as a real danger to his life or damage to his well-being, he should immediately report this to the police. I do not agree with the private opinion that the police "do not respond", our practice shows the opposite. However, the prevention of persecution will become effective when state regulations are adopted that strengthen the protection of private life,” Sofronov said.

Indeed, the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation does not contain a separate article (corpus delicti) that provides for punishment for persecution. And the police do not always take appropriate measures to protect the rights of "victims" of stalkers. The opinion of lawyers on this matter boils down to the fact that stalking is a group of offenses, for each of which liability may come.

According to Yevgenia Burmasova, a lawyer at De LATA, this is effective if the persecutor threatens the victim or family members. For example, he sends their data to the websites of hospitals, funeral services, calls himself, offering such services. Or if letters containing defamatory information about the victim are sent to the victim and his relatives, friends and acquaintances. Then, in the actions of the stalker, such an illegal act as slander is quite traceable. Violation of the secrecy of correspondence can be qualified as hacking of instant messengers or correspondence via e-mail, if their content is also distributed.

After the attack on Tatyana Felgenhauer, the journalist Bozena Rynska, who also experienced stalking, invited her to lead the fight against this phenomenon in order to achieve the introduction of protection orders in Russia, following the example of Europe or the United States. For example, in the UK, two incidents are enough for the police to perceive as unwanted: two phone calls to a stranger, two gifts, one case of physically following the victim and one phone call. However, the Echo journalist refused to be a "sacred victim." And business with the legislative initiative stalled.

Nevertheless, attorney Yevgenia Burmasova is sure that Russia is still moving towards European experience. In 2018, the Supreme Court, when considering a dispute over “intrusive” calls and SMS messages, pointed to the inviolability of private life guaranteed by the Constitution of the Russian Federation. At the same time, the court referred to the positions of the European Court, expanded the concept of “private life” and attempts to interfere in it. If earlier everything that happens behind the closed doors of a dwelling fell under this formulation, now the concept is called a capacious category that covers both the physical and moral side of an individual's life and cannot be exhaustively defined.

At the same time, Evgenia Burmasova is honest. When asked whether there are cases of private life and persecution in the practice of Russian courts, she says that she did not find any. Even though I was looking.

Fontanka tried to talk to Maria and get her opinion about stalking.

“I won't comment on this,” Maria replied in a calm voice and hung up.

P . S . Parting with Olga, the Fontanka correspondent asked her: “Do you plan to return home?” Olga Borisoglebskaya shook her head uncertainly: “I don’t believe that this will somehow end. I still expect that I will turn the corner - and there she is.

Tatyana Vodostanalova, Fontanka.ru

Author photo Igor Ivanko/Kommersant

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16. 03.2023 16:20

More than 5,000 animals from dogs to butterflies, cynological sports, pet products, a sea of kindness and positive - at the long-awaited Zooshow at Expoforum on March 25 and 26. We are waiting for people who want to help animals, and animals that come to the rescue of people. A special feature of the spring Zooshow is its social orientation. The slogan of the exhibition is “Doing good and helping is easy!”. The traditional Shelter Festival "The Way Home" will help animals in trouble find new loving homes. Project volunteers will teach responsible attitude to...

15.03.2023 16:51

MegaFon prepared the network in the Leningrad Region for the summer season

MegaFon improved the network parameters in the Leningrad Region for the beginning of the summer season – the operator expanded the 900 MHz frequency band used for data transmission. The company's analysts note that as a result of the work carried out, the capacity and throughput of the network have increased, as well as the speed of mobile Internet has increased by 10%. Technical specialists carried out a set of measures to prepare the network for an increase in load in the spring-summer period - they modernized more than 700 telecommunications infrastructure facilities in the region...

10.03.2023 13:23

YE'S Marata wins "Consumer Trust"

YE'S Marata's flagship aparthotel has won the prestigious "Consumer Trust" real estate competition. The awards ceremony, which took place on March 1 at the Loft Hall, was attended by the CEO and Marketing Director of the YE'S apart hotel chain. The main jury of "Consumer Trust" are the residents of the city, who vote for the participants in different nominations. Participation in such a competition is a unique opportunity to make sure that not only the jury, but also guests and investors give their votes to YE'S Marata and that is.

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