Students should take precautions against stalkers
Rachel Tanner
Issue date: 4/8/09 Section: Dixie Sun Link Features
Notes, phone calls and gifts are usually welcomed by people when they receive them from a friend or lover, but if the person they are getting them from is someone they'd prefer not to have contact with, it can become a problem.
On a national level, an estimated 3.4 million people age 18 or older were victims of stalking in 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, released Jan. 13, 2009. In the city of St. George, the Department of Victim Services had 115 victims walk in during their last quarter, and of those, 37 reported being stalked, said Victim Services Coordinator Roxanna Finnerty.
She said: "It boils down to where there are usually three out of four victims who know who their stalker is. Usually 22 percent of the time someone they have been involved with in some way, like an ex-boyfriend or ex-spouse, is the stalker. Only one in 10 people are stalked by strangers."
Finnerty said stalking has now gotten to where it's very sophisticated because stalkers will use GPS devices or the Internet as tools. She said she is beginning to see a lot more instances where the stalkers will open accounts on social networking sites in the victim's name and post "bad pictures" they have of that person and ask people to contact them. Then the victim will start getting strange calls from people they don't even know, she said.
"On the Internet the suspect can hide [his or her] identity and I think because of this [stalking] has definitely expanded and is becoming much more frequent," Finnerty said.
Jenny Jones, a sophomore elementary education major from Toquerville, is a victim to being stalked online.
She said: "It all started online when this guy I was going to [high] school with broke into my MySpace and Facebook accounts and started looking up personal information about me and my boyfriend at the time. At first I didn't think it was a big deal. I was kind of flattered that somebody liked me, but as things got more personal, I got really scared."
On a national level, an estimated 3.4 million people age 18 or older were victims of stalking in 2008, according to the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, released Jan. 13, 2009. In the city of St. George, the Department of Victim Services had 115 victims walk in during their last quarter, and of those, 37 reported being stalked, said Victim Services Coordinator Roxanna Finnerty.
She said: "It boils down to where there are usually three out of four victims who know who their stalker is. Usually 22 percent of the time someone they have been involved with in some way, like an ex-boyfriend or ex-spouse, is the stalker. Only one in 10 people are stalked by strangers."
Finnerty said stalking has now gotten to where it's very sophisticated because stalkers will use GPS devices or the Internet as tools. She said she is beginning to see a lot more instances where the stalkers will open accounts on social networking sites in the victim's name and post "bad pictures" they have of that person and ask people to contact them. Then the victim will start getting strange calls from people they don't even know, she said.
"On the Internet the suspect can hide [his or her] identity and I think because of this [stalking] has definitely expanded and is becoming much more frequent," Finnerty said.
Jenny Jones, a sophomore elementary education major from Toquerville, is a victim to being stalked online.
She said: "It all started online when this guy I was going to [high] school with broke into my MySpace and Facebook accounts and started looking up personal information about me and my boyfriend at the time. At first I didn't think it was a big deal. I was kind of flattered that somebody liked me, but as things got more personal, I got really scared."
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