The Stalker Issue

The Stalker Issue
Someplace today in the world someone is the victim of a stalker. Statistics tell us that 1 in 12 women and 1 in 46 men will be the victim of a stalker sometime in their lives. Additionally we know that it is not just celebrities, politicians and the wealthy that fall victims to stalkers; only about 41% of the women and 37% of the men who are victims of stalkers will file a police report. This is where private security professionals, in particular those working as Personal Protection Specialists come in. These professionals are in a position to help the victims of stalkers identify, document, and assist in reporting the stalker while providing guidance and security to the victim.
Twenty-one percent of stalking victims were assaulted by their stalker with 43% having received some sort of threat of violence. Each victim of a stalker has reported both some lost income and loss of work days due to the stalker. More than half the victims have lost 5 or more days of work as a result of the stalker.
Who faces the highest risk of stalkers? Women, but men were as likely to be victims of harassment as women with 3 of 4 victims knowing their stalker in some capacity. Thirty percent of the victims had an intimate relationship with the stalker at one time while 45% were known to them: friend, roommate, acquaintance, or relative. Less than 10% of stalkers were strangers.
How are these people being stalked? Cyber-stalking is on the increase with 82% of the victims reporting some form of cyber-stalking with instant messaging being the highest. Forty-six percent report some type of video or photographic monitoring by the stalker with around 11% saying they were tracked by GPS.
How can we in the private security industry provide assistance to these victims of stalkers? Let’s look at our training to start. Most PPS training programs include topics on residential security, surveillance and surveillance detection, threat assessment and special events planning. A fair majority of the quality programs address stalking and some even include training on detection of listening devices and cyber-crimes. We need to take this training and make use of it. While the victim of a stalker may not need a full time bodyguard, we can help them in many ways.
Recently I had a client who was being harassed by the estranged father of her custodial grandson. We provided a security survey of the residence, some surveillance after the grandson was either with the father or dropped off at the home and even some over watch while both the father and grandmother were at the same function at the same time. Did it help? Yes, it appears that the father was told that he was being observed and not wishing to lose visitation decided that the harassment was not worth it. Was this a big financial gain for me, no, but was there some satisfaction? Yes.
So while not all of us in the protective security industry are assigned to a detail, this is one avenue that we should be looking at both to help keep the victims of stalkers safe and fine tune the other skills which we may not use on a protective detail.