Abuse of Power

THE clearinghouse on police-perpetrated domestic violence

...our need to be heard is overcoming our fear

Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek is not just a game anymore.

Have we heard enough facts and percentages about DV and Stalking? Let's add the destruction of the lives of the Victims. The real stories. The true stories of the cat and mouse games and the maze a woman is forced to live in once she becomes the target of a Stalker. The Hide and Seek game I call it.

The Victim becomes the unwilling partner in a game of fear, intimidation and possibly death. Being stalked by a stranger is a terrifying experience but being stalked by someone you fear the most, someone who has threatened you in the past, and you are unsure of how far he will go to get to you, can be horrifying. And what happens when your stalker is a cop? Mine was.

Stalking is how some men raise the stakes when women don't play along. It's a crime of power, control, and most of all intimidation. The Stalker enforces our culture's cruelest rule, which is that women are not allowed to decide who will be in their lives. I was not allowed to decide who would be in my life.

My Stalker took away my ability to work without being in fear of him showing up, my ability to sleep in my own home without fear, and most of all my ability to go about all the daily activities of a normal life without fear.

He began his reign of terror on me and my family by sending me degrading, disgusting, intimidating, and threatening e-mail. He wrote things like, "I hope you rot in hell while fucking your new man. I hope you fucking die. I will see you in the cemetery."

He continually harassed and stalked me by calling, leaving messages on my machine, following me, and using other Officers' cars to follow me. He even sent another officer to my place of employment.

He took away my most basic civil rights to a peaceful life, a normal life, and a life without fear.

I did everything I could do to stop him from contacting me. I changed my personal e-mail address, I changed the locks on my doors, I put a block on his phone number, I changed my phone number. I bought Caller ID. I put a trace on my phone.

There were nights when I would drive around most of the night instead of going home. Cars pulled in and out of my driveway all night. I never knew who was in those cars and it was very frightening.

I changed my entire life to avoid his contact and he knew it. I didn't think it was ever going to end.

As I was sitting with a group of domestic violence survivors, story after story was being told, not only of physical abuse but in all the cases I heard, the event that stood out the most was the stalking. Terrifying stories of fear and hopelessness. The story about the man who moved into a house close to his victim's house, the man who bugged a woman's entire house, or the man who slashed all his victim's tires just to let her know he was around. All reported, nothing done.

Women who have re-located more than once, to get away. I watched the faces and listened as each woman told her story of what she has had to go through to hide from her Stalker. It is so unjust to have to move countless times, give up everything you have, because someone can't or won't give up on ruining your life.

But then again, crime has no justice. Sometimes the punishment has no justice either.