Lawyers Manual - Unified Court System

194 Hilary Sunghee Seo
the stalker increases the number and types of contacts, the stalker’s actions begin
to form a pattern of behavior that is objectively threatening and frightening to the
victim. Stalking victims often suffer profound psychological and emotional
harm as a result of the stalking experience.
Stalking and Domestic Violence
Despite the misimpression created by a few, highly publicized cases
involving strangers stalking celebrities, the majority of stalking victims know
their stalkers in some way. There is a close connection between domestic
violence and stalking. In fact, domestic violence often includes some form of
stalking. In the context of intimate relationships, stalking, and the fear, anxiety
and uncertainty it causes in the targeted person, become one more tool used by
the abuser to exert power and control over the victim.
A recent national survey by the National Institute of Justice bore out the
links between abusive and controlling behavior and intimate partner stalking.
Women with ex-husbands who stalked them were more than twice as likely as
women with ex-husbands who did not stalk them to report that their ex-husbands
had tried to limit their contact with family and friends (77.1% versus 32.3%),
had frightened them (92.2% versus 33.1%), made them feel inadequate (85.5%
versus 44.5%), prevented them from knowing about or having access to family
income (59.6% versus 20.8%) or prevented them from working outside the
home (30.7% versus 13%). 5
The New York Anti-Stalking Statute
The New York State Anti-Stalking Act became law in 1999 and created four
new crimes of stalking. 6 In passing this legislation, the New York State legislature
noted that stalking victims in New York “have been intolerably forced to live in
fear of their stalkers, . . . [that] stalkers who repeatedly follow, phone, write,
confront, threaten or otherwise unacceptably intrude upon their victims, often
inflict immeasurable emotional and physical harm upon them . . . [and that New
York’s] law must be strengthened to provide clear recognition of the dangerousness
of stalking.” 7