Rape Crisis Center, Brazos Valley - The Brazos County Rape Crisis Center, Inc.

There are five main parts of most stalking statutes that must be met in order for law enforcement to treat a case as a stalking case. The elements of this crime include:

· A 'willful course of conduct'

· involving repeated or continuing harassment

· of another individual

· that would cause a reasonable person* to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, 'harassed' or molested

· and that actually causes the victim to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, harassed or molested.

* Note: The idea of a reasonable person derives from British Law. It suggests a test that can be applied on the basis of an intelligent non-expert person that is a reasonable person, being put in a position able to consider the evidence that might have been available at a place or time. The test becomes: what would a reasonable person do under these circumstances, given the evidence or being exposed to a particular situation.

Stalking can go had in hand with other crimes as well. It's often accompanied by crimes such as trespass, assault, criminal mischief, loitering/prowling, and vandalism.

Stalking can be a crime in and of it and doesn't require that the stalker and the victim have some level of a relationship or even know each other at all.

In many cases, a person is stalked by someone they've had a relationship with - especially when the relationship is ending and one partner can't accept it. They might stalk you to see if you're seeing someone else, stalk you to find an opportunity to take the kids or commit an act of violence against you, or just to pressure and harass you.

Other stalkers might be total strangers - someone who sees you in a grocery store, for example, and who has serious problems in having healthy relationships. Rather than approaching you and saying "hi, I'm so-and-so" and striking up conversation to get to know you, these types of stalkers might instead follow you from afar, possibly having a type of fantasy relationship with you.

Both of these are dangerous! Don't assume that just because a stalker hasn't ever done anything violent toward you that they're not planning to!

According to the FBI's report: Victims and Offenders, Uniform Crime Report Supplement to Incident-Based Data, the statistical victim of sexual assault is white, female, and under 18 years of age. The typical offender is white, male, and over 18 years of age.

The Dept. of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics latest annual report notes that:

In 2002, 1.8 rapes or sexual assaults occurred to women and .3 to men for each 1000 people over the age of 12.

The total number of rapes reported during 2002 remained at about 1.1% at 247,730. This number includes 31,640 men.

Sexual offenses against women were committed by:

· Strangers: 61,000 (28%)

· Intimates/Partners: 21,920 (10%)

· Relatives: 3,850 (2%)

· Friends/acquaintances: 123,850(57%)

· Unknown: 5,470 (3%)

Sexual offenses against men were committed by:

· Strangers: 15,140 (48%)

· Friends/acquaintances: 16,500 (52%)

The National Victim Center's 1992 report digs deeper, noting that 75% of male students and 55% of female students involved in acquaintance rape had been drinking or using drugs.

Rape has a devastating impact on the mental health of victims. 31% of all victims develop Rape-Related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (RR-PTSD) sometime in their lifetimes. Based on U.S. Census reports on the number of women in the United States, 1.3 million women currently have RR-PTSD, 3.8 million women have previously had RR-PTSD and roughly 211,000 women will develop RR-PTSD each year.

When compared with non victims, rape victims have been found to be 8.7 times more likely to attempt suicide.

As staggering and horrific as these numbers sound, they represent barely a scratch on the surface of the actual number of those persons victimized each year. When relying on redesigned interviews with people age 12 and over in a nation-wide study (and NOT just on police reports), the National Crime Victimization Survey found that some 64% of rape survivors did not report the crime to the police.

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