Organized Stalking - A Taboo Subject

While the average 21st Century citizen prefers not to think
about this crime syndrome, stalking groups have been using 
"civilian psychological warfare" on their targets now for at 
least two decades.

And talking about this taboo topic brings a very heavy 
"don't spoil my day" response.  People not affected simply 
refuse to listen to information on stalking by more than 
one stalker.  Kind of like the way folks don't like hearing 
about cancer.

In the early 1990s, legal jursidictions in both the United
States and Canada finally enacted legislation making 
stalking a crime.  But to society's detriment, justice 
systems everywhere seamlessly ignore every case where a 
group of stalkers engage in the same behaviour as single 
stalkers.  The reason isn't clear, but it may have to do 
with the rather substantial amount of investigative labour 
required when a group takes turns doing "little nasties" 
against a target.  Who is the perpetrator?

That the stalkers are generally not career criminals makes 
going after stalking group members a substantial project 
for the justice system.  Some of the stalkers have 
considerable respect in their communities.

Today's stalking groups use very carefully planned 
harassment methods.  Every single act of harassment is 
carefully designed so that it is in the "life's normal 
breaks" category.  What the target sees are "normal breaks" 
which usually occur maybe once or twice a month on average, 
to maybe once a year.  But for organized stalking targets, 
such "normal breaks" happen at least once, and often several 
times a DAY.

This "life's normal breaks" format of the crime also adds 
to the difficulty of investigating and prosecuting organized 
stalking.  In turn, the apparent normalcy makes it very easy 
for police and other officials to brush off complaints of 
organized stalking as the target being "mistaken", 
"overreacting," or often, "in need of seeing a good 
psychiatrist."

"Life's normal breaks" span a huge range of seriousness.

At the low end you have endless noise from co-opted 
neighbours who observe the target and schedule "normal 
activity" like running a leaf blower for each time a target 
may wish to enjoy peaceful activity.  Or scattering the 
target's mail on their porch while the target is away at 
work.  Or frequent, make believe, obviously sarcastic 
"wrong number" calls.

But at the opposite end of the range, you have 
surreptitious entry to the target's home, car and workplace, 
with sabotage of belongings, and torture and even the death 
of pets.  One target came home to find antifreeze in the 
dog's dish, and the dog permanently blind.  Some pets or 
wild animals are butchered and left on the target's 
doorstep.

It is common, where a target is married, for the stalkers 
to carefully harass the target only at times and places 
when the target is separated from the partner.  This 
eventually drives the target to complain, and the usual 
reaction is "Don't talk about that any more" or "Go see a 
psychiatrist right away".  The marriage is then often 
headed for destruction.

Vicious lies are circulated in the community, and these 
lies do not stop.  Such lies as the target is a prostitute, 
a drug user, a drug dealer, has a long criminal record, or 
the highly destructive favourite (applied to both men and 
women,) the target is a pedophile.

Sabotage, lies, and harassment happen at the workplace as 
well, and it's not unusual for the target to be driven 
from a job.  Once that happens, when the target looks for 
another job, the target is shadowed, and lies are fed to 
prospective employers.  Some targets have been driven to 
homelessness, and a few have been driven to suicide.

So just because activity is confined to "life's normal 
breaks", these "breaks" can be devastating and even become 
life-and-death issues.

Along with the lies, endless sabotage of individually 
small, but cumulatively important belongings accompanies 
the surreptitious entries, which are done using 
locksmithing techniques, and often, illegally obtained 
keys.  The target effectively owns nothing, because 
anything he or she owns is subject to being ruined.

Sabotage is carefully spaced out and held to relatively 
low individual value per incident, as are the thefts that 
also occur.  A great deal of effort is put into planning 
the sabotage and thefts, and scheduling them so police will 
not take the complaints seriously.

Even the sabotage has a well planned psychological element:  
Clothing is often ripped open at sexually significant 
places like armpits and crotches.   Can you imagine taking 
your underwear to the police station to report that someone 
broke in and ripped out all the crotches?  Do you think the 
police would treat that as a crime worthy of their 
attention?

How long does this go on?  With a literal handful of rare 
exceptions, for life.  Because the stalking groups continue 
to recruit and grow indefinitely, there is no "tiring" of 
the stalker, as happens in single stalker cases.

To this point, I've briefly highlighted the crime of 
organized stalking.  Organized stalking is sometimes called 
"gang stalking" though the stalking group members generally 
don't appear to be affiliated with youth gangs, race gangs, 
biker gangs, or say, the Mafia.  "Vigilante stalking" is 
sometimes used because of the false allegations that 
targets are active criminals.

The big question of course, is "Why?"  The full answer has 
yet to be discovered.

For an individual target, the "Why?" answer relates to the 
lies told to the people doing the harassing.  There are 
people in any neighbourhood or community who enjoy the 
feeling of self-righteousness from "helping keeping crime 
under control", or in some cases "doing the Lord's work."  
Tell the right lies, and it's not hard to recruit harassers.

A second part of the "Why?" question, for which no clear 
answer is yet available, is why the leaders of these 
organized stalking groups propagate the lies.  One author, 
Florida private investigator David Lawson, investigated 
organized stalking groups for more than a decade, and 
succeeded in infiltrating groups in the United States and 
Canada.

His current book on the subject is "Cause Stalking" and 
is available from amazon.com

David Lawson found that the organized stalking group 
leaders keep something of an "arm's length" distance from 
the members, often passing target designations in ways 
where the leader can't be identified, such as a coded 
classified newspaper ad, or even a mention on a local 
radio show.

Lawson reports that leaders are often from "somewhere 
else" and claim to have worked in "intelligence" or other 
difficult to verify jobs.  He was able to interact with 
stalking group members, but his information on the 
leaders is skimpy.

David Lawson did report some corporate funding of these 
stalking groups, by corporations who needed ways to deal 
with people and groups they consider their "enemies."  
People like activists and whistleblowers, or even 
intellectuals critical of their activities.

Cases are known where, for example, a wife discovers her 
husband is a pedophile and reports him.  Inheritance 
disputes are understandable.  And of course, some 
organized stalking cases have resulted from having a 
marriage or relationship go sour.

Those are reasons why some targets have been selected, 
but it is distressing that there are many targets who 
do not know why they were initially chosen.

The reason David Lawson chose "Cause Stalking" as the 
title of his current book on the subject is that he found 
organized stalking members are often recruited on the basis 
of some "cause".  Lawson didn't elaborate on the causes 
used for recruiting, but did report that once recruited, 
the "front" cause is essentially ignored, and the actual 
work of the group is to harass "criminals", and perhaps 
drive them out of the community.

Lawson reports, and targets concur, that across the U.S. 
and Canada, local groups now exist everywhere and the are 
seamlessly networked.  If a target moves, the group in the 
new location will continue the harassment.

David Lawson has done ground-breaking work in exposing the 
plight of thousands of  organized stalking targets.  His 
observations are hailed by the targets as "right on the 
money" - highly accurate.

And yet, he has missed the mark when it comes to his 
conclusions.

Lawson repeatedly lays the blame for organized stalking 
groups at the feet of foreign terrorists (the "Al Quaeda" 
thing,) and, members of the U.S. Patriot Movement, who, 
according to their radio shows, are interested in exposing 
government crimes and deviations from the U.S. Consitution.  
(Lawson calls them "anti government", but one would think 
that exposing government crime is a truly patriotic act.)

Lawson's own observations simply do not show any involvement 
by either foreign terrorists or the U.S. Patriot movement.  
No connection is visible.  That doesn't mean there aren't 
some members of either Al-Quaeda or the U.S. Patriot 
Movement who also do some organized stalking, but targets 
don't report a visible connection with those groups from 
their experiences.

So, what can be done about the crime of organized stalking?

In the opinion of this writer, all it would take to stop 
it would be for organized stalking to become a household 
word.  That's it.  It's that simple.

The problem is that because the justice system consistently 
denies the reality, the media has nothing they are willing 
to print.  If a target approaches reporters, the reporters, 
under the gun for accuracy, are very reluctant, though 
there are small hints this may be slowly changing.

If the general public were aware of this crime, the 
pressure on the justice system would be sufficient to stop 
it, I claim.

Meanwhile, what can someone who discovers (and that can 
take time) that their endless "bad luck" is really 
organized stalking do to help themselves?

Right now, there are a precious few, a small minority, of 
crisis support organization counselors who do know 
organized stalking is "real" and will offer some support.  
They cannot stop the crime, nor can they force the 
reluctant justice system to act to help the target, but it 
can make a huge difference just knowing one person, 
especially connected with an organization, does believe 
the target and does know that organized stalking is a real 
crime.

Anti-organized stalking activists need to work harder at 
developing connections with those few crisis support 
counselors, in the view of this writer.

Perhaps the largest pool of activity among targets is 
networking via the Internet.  Because destruction of 
targets' incomes is a high priority of the stalkers, target 
activism is rather poorly funded, but some things are 
happening.  At the moment, I'd like to recommend googling 
"organized stalking" (with the quotes) to readers who may 
believe their "bad luck" has reached the point of organized 
stalking.

Networking doesn't stop the harassment but it can 
dramatically improve the outlook for targets.

What can the general public do to help?

Look up organized stalking on the Internet, read what is 
available, and above all else, talk it up.  The day 
organized stalking becomes a household word is the day 
that this crime will be properly attended to by justice 
systems.

Special thanks to readers who have read this article.
