Stalkers. Jean Ritchie

Elsewhere in America it is less than ten per cent, a figure that is probably consistent with British experience, although no comparable research has been carried out.

      The dictionary definition of stalking is ‘to pursue prey stealthily’, and that is exactly what the human stalker does. His technique may be to make endless phone calls, or to send unwanted taxis and pizza deliveries, or to mail a stream of obscene letters. He may threaten violence, and he may even carry out his threats. Or he may simply, boringly, repetitively, to the point of persecution, try to insinuate himself in someone else’s life. However he does it, he is the hunter and his victim is the prey: he is a stalker.

      Not all stalkers, of course, are male, there are some female stalkers about. More women become involved in celebrity stalking – pursuing an unattainable figure from a distance – than any other kind. But the majority of stalkers, more than eighty-five per cent, are men, according to American statistics. For them, stalking is connected with control; they want power over their victims and they can achieve this by frightening them, or – more simply – by knowing everything about their lives.

      For the purposes of this book, stalking has been broken down into four broad categories: celebrity stalking, stalking by a complete stranger, stalking by an acquaintance and stalking by an ex-partner (boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife). This last category is the largest but also the hardest to define: ex-partners often behave with irrational jealousy, and that behaviour alone does not make them into stalkers. They usually have genuine ties with their victims: there may be children in common, property in common, or at least a social life in common, and the break can be emotionally devastating, leading to a certain amount of clinging on, refusing to give up. But there comes a point when this is no longer the acceptable reaction of a grieving ex. Recognizing that point may be hard (it is hard for all stalking victims, whatever category they come into, but especially hard for this group). When there are phone calls coming at all hours day or night, when there is a car parked outside or a figure lurking in the shadows, that is stalking. Because of the severed emotional ties it is often more difficult for the victim to deal with it, and more difficult for the stalker to accept that his or her behaviour is objectionable.

      Stalking by someone who is known to the victim is the second biggest category. A casual acquaintance suddenly starts to take an overwhelming interest in all the details of their victim’s life, they misinterpret small gestures of friendship into large expressions of love, they begin to write, phone, follow the person they are fixated on. As they get no encouragement they feel rejected, and that turns their love into hatred. Threats and obscenities usually follow.

      This pattern is repeated by the stalkers who latch on to complete strangers, as well as by those who persecute celebrities. In both these groups, the pursuit is of an unrealistic ideal: the stranger or the celebrity is endowed with all the attributes the stalker is looking for in a partner. Their beliefs about their love-object may go off the sanity scale, but they are deeply held. Gay pop singer Boy George enjoyed the joke immensely when a woman claimed he was the father of her child. He delighted in telling the journalists outside the court in which she sued him for maintenance for the child that it would be a miracle if he was the father as ‘I have never penetrated a woman in my life.’ Yet there was a part of the woman that believed her own wild claims.

      For many of these celebrity or stranger stalkers, with rejection comes anger and feelings of betrayal, which can lead to threats, obscene abuse and in some cases real violence.

      Stalkers are all suffering from some degree of mental derangement, ranging from a severe psychotic illness like schizophrenia, in which the sufferer often believes he is responding to voices in his head which dictate his behaviour, to simple obsession, when behaviour can be quite normal in all other respects. This milder form is a version of more readily acceptable obsessions: there are football fanatics who plaster their bedroom walls with pictures of their favourite players and whose whole conversation and social life revolves around their team; there are railway enthusiasts who can crawl out of bed on cold wet mornings to collect train numbers at grimy stations; there are fitness freaks who suffer from withdrawal symptoms if they don’t get their daily workout. What starts as an interest and a hobby edges into a position of paramount importance; for the stalker it is the same slow build up. Many adolescents have crushes on music and film stars which are gradually superseded by real-life love affairs. Many people keep their youthful infatuations with them for life – plenty of happily married mothers and grandmothers turn up to have their heartstrings fluttered by Cliff Richard or Tom Jones in concert. But they have a sense of proportion: the rock star is a small and harmless helping of escapism. For a few, though, real life cannot or does not take the place of the fantasy, and the obsession with the star builds up until it dominates life enough to turn the fan into a fanatic, the fanatic into a stalker.

      Similarly, a normal part of the business of growing up is to experience a painful love affair, to be rejected, to love unrequited from afar. Anyone who claims never to have been let down in love is probably lying or has a conveniently selective memory. Getting over it can be painful and protracted: adolescents, particularly, are inclined to feel that they will never love again. As Plato said, love is a serious mental condition: love casts out intelligence. The vast majority, of course, do get over it; for one or two, the experience assumes such epic dimensions that it dominates their lives, and the person they love becomes the focus of an obsession.

      This is the more rational end of stalking, the tipping of the balance from the normal madness of love to unacceptable behaviour. Many a young person will have dialled the number of the person who is ignoring them, and then hung up. Many will have hung around the college corridors or the pubs and clubs their loved one frequents in the hope of catching a glimpse, even though they know that their affection is not returned. When the dialling of the phone number and the hanging around become a habit, then the delicate balance has shifted.

      But there are much wilder shores of stalking, and these are the shores of clinical madness, where the stalker is psychotically ill. Because these stalkers dance to the tunes of their own fractured minds, they will not respond to normal reasoning or pleading, to the law, to physical threats, to anything. Imprisoning the mentally ill does not help, although holding them in secure mental hospitals is sometimes the only consolation that the victims can hope for because, as with so much psychotic illness, containment and not cure is all that can be provided.

      David Nias is a clinical psychologist who lectures at London University, and who has worked at Broadmoor Hospital, a secure unit for the criminally insane, and has studied the varying degrees and effects of obsession. Many stalkers, he believes, are suffering from a condition known as De Clerembault’s Syndrome, named after the French doctor who discovered it. Sufferers put romantic constructions on to the most innocuous exchanges, eventually losing touch with reality and becoming obsessed with an unobtainable person, believing that this person reciprocates their feelings. They commonly believe that other people or things are thwarting the relationship. In this extreme form the condition is known as erotomania.

      ‘All the old clichés about love are true: life-long passion, madly in love, blinded by love, hopelessly in love. They are all, quite literally, true for some people. The classic symptoms are delusion,’ says Dr Nias. ‘The person who stalks a stranger, a celebrity or someone they only know slightly is usually a psychotic, carrying delusions about someone who is in a higher position socially and with whom they have very little in common. They become convinced this person is in love with them and plague their lives. They are irrational, and however hard you try to dissuade them they can come up with evidence of their own that their beliefs are true. They are, quite literally, madly in love.

      ‘Some doctors believe that erotomania, the delusion that one is loved by another, is a form of schizophrenia, and treat patients with major tranquillizers (anti-psychotic drugs: the name is misleading because they are not related to normal tranquillizers). If they have come to the attention of the medical profession because their behaviour has been inappropriate, they are often held in secure units until it is judged medically that they are safe to be released. But the trouble is that away from their obsession many of them seem perfectly normal, rational people.

      ‘They try to persuade doctors that they are over their obsession: then you visit their room and the wall is plastered with pictures or references to their