The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence (32 page)
Read The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect us from Violence Online
Authors: Gavin De Becker
As with domestic violence situations, victims will often be advised that they must do something (police, TRO, warning) to their stalker. From the larger social point of view, such advice might be correct. If one thinks of a stalker as a danger to society—a virtual tiger lurking around the corner waiting to victimize someone—then it may be true that somebody should do something about it, but nobody is obligated to volunteer for that fight, particularly if it’s avoidable. If one could know and warn a stalking victim that as she rounds the next corner, she’ll be attacked, which option makes more sense: Go around the corner, or take another route? If the fight is avoidable, and it’s my wife, my daughter, my friend, or my client, I would recommend avoidance first. That’s because fighting will always be available, but it isn’t always possible to go back to avoidance once a war is under way.
Victims of stalking will also hear the same conventional wisdom that is offered to battered women: Get a restraining order. Here, as with battered wives, it is important to evaluate which cases might be improved by court intervention and which might be worsened. Much depends upon how escalated the case is and how much emotional investment has been made by the stalker. If he has been actively pursuing the same victim for years and has already ignored warnings and interventions, then a restraining order isn’t likely to help. Generally speaking, court orders that are introduced early carry less risk than those introduced after the stalker has made a significant emotional investment or introduced threats and other sinister behavior. Restraining orders obtained soon after a pursuer has ignored a single explicit rejection will carry more clout and less risk than those obtained after many months or years of stalking.
There is a category of stalker for which court orders frequently help (or at least aren’t dangerous). It is the one we call the naive pursuer. He is a person who simply does not realize the inappropriateness of his behavior. He might think, “I am in love with this person. Accordingly, this is a love relationship, and I am acting the way people in love act.”
This type of unwanted pursuer is generally rational, though perhaps a bit thick and unsophisticated. Not all naive pursuers are seeking romantic relationships. Some are persistently seeking to be hired for a job or to learn why they were not hired for a job, why their idea was not accepted, why their manuscript was rejected, etc. The naive pursuer is usually distinguishable from conventional stalkers by his lack of machismo and his lack of anger at being rejected. He just seems to go along, happily believing he is courting someone. He stays with it until someone makes completely clear to him that his approach is inappropriate, unacceptable, and counterproductive. This isn’t always easy, but it’s usually safe to try.
Because victims are understandably frustrated and angry, they may look to a court order to do any of the following things:
D
estroy
E
xpose
T
hreaten
A
venge
C
hange
H
umiliate
Note that the acronym for this list is also the only goal that makes sense from a safety point of view, and that is to DETACH, to have the guy out of your life. As with battered women, the restraining order may move you closer to that goal, or it may move you farther away. It is one management plan, but not the only one.
▪ ▪ ▪
The type of stalker who a woman has briefly dated (as opposed to a stranger she’s never met) is quite similar to the controlling or battering husband, though he is far less likely to introduce violence. His strategies include acting pathetic to exploit a victim’s sympathy or guilt, calling on supposed promises or commitments, annoying a victim so much that she gives in and continues seeing him, and finally the use of fear through intimidating statements and actions (threats, vandalism, slashing tires, etc.).
Recall Katherine, who asked me if there was a list of warning signs about men who might later become a problem. I’ll repeat her story, this time pointing out the warning signs:
I dated this guy named Bryan. We met at a party of a friend of mine, and he must have asked somebody there for my number [researching the victim]. Before I even got home, he’d left me three messages [overly invested]. I told him I didn’t want to go out with him, but he was so enthusiastic about it that I really didn’t have any choice [
Men who cannot let go choose women who cannot say No
]. In the beginning, he was super-attentive, always seemed to know what I wanted. He remembered everything I ever said [hyper-attentiveness]. It was flattering, but it also made me uncomfortable [victim intuitively feels uncomfortable]. Like when he remembered that I once mentioned needing more space for my books, he just showed up one day with shelves and all the stuff and just put them up [offering unsolicited help; loan-sharking]. I couldn’t say no. And he read so much into whatever I said. Once he asked if I’d go to a basketball game with him, and I said maybe. He later said, ‘You promised’ [projecting onto others emotions or commitments that are not present]. Also, he talked about serious things so early, like living together and marriage and children [whirlwind pace, placing issues on the agenda prematurely]. He started with jokes about that stuff the first time we went out, and later he wasn’t joking. Or when he suggested that I have a phone in my car. I wasn’t sure I even wanted a car phone, but he borrowed my car and just had one installed (loan-sharking). It was a gift, so what could I say? And, of course, he called me whenever I was in the car [monitoring activity and whereabouts]. And he was so adamant that I never speak to my ex-boyfriend on that car phone. Later, he got angry if I spoke to my ex at all [jealousy]. There were also a couple of my friends he didn’t like me to see [isolating her from friends], and he stopped spending time with any of his own friends [making another person responsible to be one’s whole social world]. Finally, when I told him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend, he refused to hear it [refusing to hear “no”].
All this is done on auto-pilot by the stalker, who seeks to control the other person so she can’t leave him. Being in control is an alternative to being loved, and since his identity is so precariously dependent on a relationship, he carefully shores up every possible leak. In so doing, he also strangles the life out of the relationship, ensuring that it could never be what he says (and maybe even believes) he wants.
Bryan would not pursue a woman who could really say and mean No, though he is very interested in one who initially says No and then gives in. I assure you that Bryan tested Katherine on this point within minutes of meeting her:
Bryan: Can I get you something to drink?
Katherine: No, but thank you.
Bryan: Oh, come on, what’ll you have?
Katherine: Well, I could have a soft drink, I guess.
This may appear to be a minor exchange, but it is actually a very significant test. Bryan found something she said no to, tried a light persuasion, and Katherine gave in, perhaps just because she wanted to be nice. He will next try one a notch more significant, then another, then another, and finally he’s found someone he can control. The exchange about the drink is the same as the exchange they will later have about dating, and later about breaking up. It becomes an unspoken agreement that he will drive and she will be the passenger. The trouble comes when she tries to re-negotiate that agreement.
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Popular news stories would have us believe that stalking is like a virus that strikes its victims without warning, but Katherine, like most victims, got a signal of discomfort right at the start—and ignored it. Nearly every victim I’ve ever spoken with stayed in even after she wanted out. It doesn’t have to be that way. Women can follow those early signals of intuition right from the start.
Dating carries several risks: the risk of disappointment, the risk of boredom, the risk of rejection, and the risk of letting some troubled, scary man into your life. The whole process is most similar to an audition, except that the stakes are higher. A date might look like the audition in
Tootsie
, in which the man wants the part so badly that he’ll do anything to get it, or it can be an opportunity for the woman to evaluate important pre-incident indicators. Doesn’t sound romantic? Well, daters are doing an evaluation anyway; they’re just doing it badly. I am suggesting only that the evaluation be conscious and informed.
The woman can steer the conversation to the man’s last break-up and evaluate how he describes it. Does he accept responsibility for his part? Is he still invested? Was he slow to let go, slow to hear what the woman communicated? Has he let go yet?
Who broke up with whom?
This last question is an important one, because stalkers are rarely the ones who initiate break-ups. Has he had several “love-at-first-sight” relationships? Falling for people in a big way based on just a little exposure to them, particularly if this is a pattern, is a valuable PIN. A woman can explore a new date’s perception of male and female roles as well as his ideas about commitment, obsession, and freedom. A woman can observe if and how the man tries to change her mind, even on little things. I am not proposing a checklist of blunt questions, but I am suggesting that all the information is there to be mined through artful conversation.
The final lesson in that ideal class for young men and women would center on the fact that contrary to the scary and alarming stories shown on the local news, very few date-stalking situations end in violence. The newspeople would have you believe that if you’re being stalked, you’d better get your will in order, but this level of alarm is usually inappropriate. Date-stalkers do not jump from nonviolent harassment to homicide without escalations along the way, escalations that are almost always apparent or at least detectable.
To avoid these situations, listen to yourself right from the start. To avoid escalation if you are already in a stalking situation, listen to yourself at every step along the way. When it comes to date-stalkers, your intuition is now loaded, so listen.
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The families of those date-stalkers who physically harmed their victims, like the families of the other criminals discussed in this book, have had to face a question no parent ever wants to ask: Why did our child grow up to be violent? The answers can help parents and others see the warning signs and patterns years before they get that tragic phone call or visit from the police.
I’ve learned a lot about this from young people who killed others, some who killed themselves, and as you’ll see in the next chapter, one who did a little of both.
FEAR OF CHILDREN
“My father did not tell me how to live.
He lived, and let me watch him do it.”
—
Clarence Budinton Kelland
The staff at Saint Augustine Church was busy preparing for its biggest day of the year. Those who’d been around for a while correctly predicted a full chapel, but their prediction of a congregation gathered in happy anticipation of Christmas was very wrong. This year it would be more like a funeral, though different in one important respect: Mourners in a church are usually far from where their loved ones died, but those gathered at Saint Augustine’s that Christmas Eve would be just a few feet from where the bodies were found, one dead, one near dead.
Everyone at the mass knew about the grisly discovery, but not one person could claim to understand why two eighteen-year-old boys would stand in the shadow of their church and each shoot himself in the mouth with a sawed-off shotgun.
After every violent tragedy, loved ones are forced to take a hard look at everything in their lives. They begin an awful and usually unrewarding search for responsibility. Family members cluster at the two far ends of the spectrum: those who blame themselves and those who blame others. The kids their children spent time with, the other parent, the jilting girlfriend—someone will invariably be doused with the family’s shame and rage and guilt.
Often, a parent will blame the person who sold a child drugs, but James Vance’s mother went much further from home. She blamed a heavy-metal rock band named Judas Priest, and she blamed the mom-and-pop record store that sold their records. She insisted the proprietors should have predicted that the album
Stained Class
would compel her son to enter into a suicide pact with his friend Ray. She felt the store should have warned the boys about the lethality of that album.
When I was asked to testify in the case on behalf of the owners of the record store, I anticipated an interesting study into the media’s impact on violence. I did not expect it to be the only case of my career I would later wish I hadn’t taken. I had volunteered for many unpleasant explorations and performed with fairly unhesitating professionalism, but when the time came, I did not want to go into that churchyard, I did not want to feel the quiet depression and grief of Ray’s mother, nor challenge Mrs. Vance’s strong denial. I did not want to study the autopsy reports, nor see the photos, nor come to learn the details of this sad story.
But I did it all, and James Vance ended up as my unwitting and unlikely guide into the lives and experiences of many young Americans. From him, I learned how they feel about drugs, alcohol, television, ambition, intimacy, and crime. He would help me answer the question of so many parents: What are the warning signs that my child might be prone to violence? From the vantage point of that churchyard, I saw young people as I’d never seen them before. Much of what James taught me applies to gang violence, but it also helps explain the sometimes more frightening behavior of middle-class young men whose brutality takes everyone by surprise.
