While Maltese law now recognises stalking as a specific offence, it does not protect victims unless criminal proceedings are instituted. This makes it doubly hard for women to take action against their stalker. Two of them share their frightening experiences with Ramona Depares.

­­The sixth time Anna found a male acquaintance waiting for her outside her workplace, unsolicited, she decided to take her colleague’s advice and do something about it.

Having finally gathered the courage to file a police report, Anna (name has been changed) fully expected the law to intervene to put a stop to the repeated harassment she had been subjected to during the previous weeks.

However, she was not expecting to be told that, unless she agreed to take the case to the criminal courts, there was nothing that could be done to help her. 

“The police officer on duty was extremely sympathetic, but unless I signed a formal request for proceedings to be instituted, nothing could be done. I asked whether some sort of warning could be issued, but I was told that this could only be done by the magistrate,” she says.

Anna’s story follows a pattern that, in today’s world of cyber relations, has become rather common.

“The first time it happened, I didn’t realise I was being stalked. I thought it would be a one-off,” Anna says.

Her stalker was someone whom she had told, earlier in the week, that she had no interest in dating. Ten years her junior, she had ‘met’ him via Facebook Messenger after he sent her a friend request on the flimsy excuse that they had acquaintances in common.

The online friendship flourished via a series of chats, and Anna accepted an invitation to meet up at a St Julian’s café. But, when the two parted ways, she knew that she would not be accepting a second date.

“There was something in the almost proprietorial way he was talking to me that I didn’t like. I figured I’d let things die a natural death,” she says.

But events were precipitated by the proposal of a second date that very same evening. Anna refused politely, and figured that was the end of it. But the young man had other ideas.

“I went to sleep to six missed calls and a host of messages. When I woke up, the missed calls totalled 36. Was I freaked out? Not as much as I should have been. I put it down to injured pride and thought he’d give up fast if I continued to ignore him.”

But the next day, Anna found him waiting for her outside her office building at lunch-time.

“I was feeling bad that I had brushed him off by chat and thought that he wanted closure in person,” she remembers.

But the messages and calls continued all through the evening, ignored, and the next day, he was back outside her office.

“At that point, I realised that I had a problem. That night I blocked him on my phone and on all social media.” The young man kept showing up outside the office, and Anna stopped going out for lunch.

“I became jumpy, not only because of the stress of wondering where I’d find him next, but also because I was scared he would walk into the building and embarrass me in front of my colleagues,” she recalls.

Suddenly, I was scared; it was no longer an annoyance

Her colleagues quickly figured out that something was wrong. Their advice was to report him to the police. Wary of the hassle she thought would ensue, she decided to give things a bit more time to calm down.

But the following week she found the young man waiting for her when she finished her working day.

“To do that, he’d had to miss work. Suddenly, I was scared; it was no longer an annoyance. I walked to my colleague’s car and she drove me straight to the police station.”

Having left the police station without a solution, her stalker’s disturbing behaviour continued sporadically. She became terrified that he would find out where she lived and started parking her car a 15-minute walk away from her apartment, keeping her eyes peeled before approaching her street. Eventually, she decided to go to a lawyer.

The lawyer repeated what Anna already knew, but also suggested a difference course of action. 

“He advised me to send him a lawyer’s letter warning him that I had filed a police report, and that if he harassed me again I would initiate court proceedings. The lawyer stressed that the letter had no legal weight, but that in many cases it looked authoritative enough to scare away wrongdoers,” she explains.

The letter was dispatched and Anna never saw her stalker again. But the incident had taken its toll, and it took months for her to be able to park her car right outside her apartment without any fear, or even to go out for lunch-break without checking every corner.

“Nowadays, I am wary when talking to strangers, and I appreciate the dangers of allowing strangers into my life through social media. He looked so harmless. But when they’re online people only show you what they want to show you, right? What would have happened had the lawyer’s letter not worked? I don’t think I would have had the will to go through with the embarrassment and expense of a court case,” she says.

These are words echoed by many other women.

You’re not alone

Last year, a total of 207 stalking and harassment reports were filed with the police, while records for this year up to September show a total of 142 reports. Women are the main targets.

No option but to go to court

Lawyer Deborah Azzopardi, who has carried out in-depth research on stalking, confirms that at present there are no other legal alternatives that victims can opt for, apart from court proceedings.

“A protection order may be issued by the court during the inquiry stage, restricting or forbidding the accused person from approaching or following the complainant. Such orders may also forbid or limit access to locations frequented by the protected person, such as the latter’s place of work,” Dr Azzopardi says. 

However, the law does not make similar provisions for the issuing of protection orders outside of court proceedings.

“If the law allowed for this measure, then specially trained police personnel would be able to make a direct assessment of the situation as soon as a police report is filed. They would work together with highly qualified professionals to determine whether there exists prima facie evidence that the victim is at risk and thus needs further protection.”

A protection order is intended to keep the victim safe from harm by forbidding any sort of engagement between the person who feels at risk and the ‘offending’ party. The order does not show up on a person’s criminal record.

Go ahead, make a fuss

Stalking refers to the intentional and malicious behaviour of obsessive following, spying or harassing another person and is now treated as a specific offence under Article 251AA of the Criminal Code.

It requires a patterned behaviour towards a specific person over a period of time, although a one-off incident can still be actionable under the offence of ‘harassment’.

Stalking carries a prison term or a fine, or both. Additionally, the court may also award a treatment order requiring the perpetrator to submit himself to any treat-ment provided.

If you feel threatened by someone’s behaviour, do not be afraid to take action:

• Report the incidents as, more often than not, such offences are only prosecutable on the complaint of the injured party. 

• Keep a record of the incidents occurring. This may be useful for future reference in court cases.

• Never worry that you are creating a fuss for nothing. There have been many cases where threatening and obsessive behaviours have had serious repercussions for the victims, including death.

Facebook flirtation that took a dark turn

Maria (not her real name) met her stalker on Facebook after asking for a recommendation for some house-works on a popular social page.

“He sent me details of a workman by private message and, some weeks later, he messaged again and asked me whether everything had gone smoothly,” Maria says.

The two started chatting and soon the conversations started taking a more intimate turn. “I was going through a lonely phase, so I went along with it. In hindsight, it was not the cleverest move, talking so freely to a stranger,” she adds.

After texting nearly every day for a few weeks, her new acquaintance started piling on the pressure for a real-life meeting.

“I didn’t really want to meet him. We had nothing in common and our conversations had always been limited to flirting, and sometimes a bit more,” Maria explains.

She started communicating less frequently, hoping that the man would get the hint. “He didn’t. At one point he sent me this long text telling me that I had led him on and that it was not fair. The conversation degenerated after I told him I owed him nothing, and I decided to block him.”

Every time I blocked the number, he’d get a new one and use that

This was when things took an ominous direction. Maria started receiving friend requests from obviously fake profiles, as well as phone calls and messages from unfamiliar numbers. “The messages all said that I should be made to pay for treating him so badly. Every time I blocked the number, he’d get a new one and use that. I got worried. I never imagined a Facebook flirtation could take such a dark turn.”

Even so, Maria resolved not to rise to the provocation, never replying to a single text in the hope that eventually he would get tired of harassing her.

Instead, her stalker started getting in touch with people from her Facebook friends list, going so far as to send them screenshots of their more intimate conversations.

“Old friends and family members started getting in touch telling me to be careful because this man was out to get me. He was telling them that I couldn’t be trusted, while sharing our personal conversations with them! I put my Facebook friends list on private, but by then it was too late,” she remembers, the embarrassment still evident on her face. Maria says that it was this humiliation, rather than the fear of being stalked, that propelled her to take action. However, after spending over two hours at the police station going over every detail of her harrowing experience, she was told that she would have to agree for the police to initiate court proceedings.

“The last thing I wanted was to go to court and to endure further embarrassment. I refused. But I couldn’t spend my life wondering what embarrassing screenshots this man was sending to people I know. The biggest worry was that it would get to my parents, who are elderly. Or my employer, who thankfully was not on my Facebook list of friends,” she remembers.

She confided in one of her oldest friends, who was already aware of what was going on, having been on the receiving end of one of the stalkers’ messages.

“My friend suggested that I should let this man’s mother know what her son was up to and ask her to put a stop to it. I knew that he lived with his parents,” Maria explains.

She decided it was worth the gamble, and the very next day turned up at her stalker’s home in the morning, when she knew he’d be at work. “I took my friend with me, because I was really nervous. When I explained what was happening, his mother did not believe me, at first. Then my friend showed her the messages and she started crying and apologising at the same time. Apparently, this was not the first time that there was some sort of trouble involving him,” Maria says.

A tense few weeks followed but, when she heard no further news related to her stalker, Maria figured that the plan had worked.

“I suppose I got lucky. Otherwise, I don’t know what the next step would have been. I definitely was not about to go to court. I would have felt so stupid,” she concludes.