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China Elevator Stories
The Stalker At The Café
The stalking didn’t end with my last post.
01/06/2024
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
This is how the situation with the co-worker who stalked me unfolded:
I did indeed have to go to the police after publishing my post about his stalking because my co-worker did not stop stalking and harassing me.
Before I went to the police, I sent my boss an email to inform him that I planned to quit my job. The situation had further escalated, and I did not want to put my life at risk.
It was only then that we were able to find a new solution, which was that I wouldn’t have to quit my job, and I wouldn’t have to stay at the office at the same time as my co-worker.
My co-worker was assigned to work externally so that we wouldn’t be at the office together. Working from home was not an option because my company does not offer remote work.
Before we could reach this solution, I had to inform a few more people (mostly superiors) about the stalking, because many of the people I informed didn’t take the situation seriously enough.
I have repeatedly encountered this problem in Austria.
When a woman says she is being stalked, I have found the following scenarios to be common:
- People don’t believe the situation is as serious as the woman says it is.
- People say the stalking didn’t even happen: “She was simply imagining it.”
- People will tell you that stalking is only stalking when the victim perceives it as stalking.
- In the worst case, people will ask the stalker about his take on the situation, and he may lie, leading others to believe him instead of the victim.
This can be hazardous, and I have experienced all four scenarios!
In my eyes, stalking is always stalking.
I like to compare it to a driving car: A car is a driving car if it moves, and usually, this means someone is driving it. A person may not perceive it as a driving car, but the car is still driving.
The same is true for stalking. Stalking is not only stalking when the victim perceives it as such. Stalking is always stalking simply because a person is being stalked by another, and it is an act independent of the victim’s perception of it.
I am saying this because acts of stalking are defined by various behaviors, acts, and intentions on the part of the stalker. A victim may not always know exactly what stalking is or that she is being stalked. She could be stalked without realizing it, or she could be stalked but not call it stalking. The stalking would still be happening.
Framing it this way protects victims.
If you make an act of stalking dependent on the victim’s perception, the perpetrator can easily get off the hook. If the victim doesn’t recognize the act as stalking or others say it isn’t, this can put the victim in a precarious situation.
A woman may also know she is being stalked, but when she tells others and they suggest she isn’t, she could come to the false conclusion that she isn’t being stalked when, in reality, she is.
I have to say that going to the police in Austria for protection from a stalker is usually not very helpful (which doesn’t mean I recommend you not go to the police—please do, in any case, to keep yourself as safe as possible in situations like this).
If you have been to the police in Austria in the past, you may know that going to the police is almost as efficient as going to a Playmobil policeman to ask him to catch a stalker or a murderer for you (=pretty much useless)!
As I see it, anti-stalking laws in Austria are not strict enough to protect victims from stalkers. You would have to be almost or already dead for courts to consider it as horrific an act as it actually is.
It seems to me that this is a blind spot where the police and courts do not realize how horrific stalking is, how dangerous it can become, and where victims are therefore not sufficiently protected, preventing acts of violence.
When I reported my ex-husband to the police for stalking in 2022, when we were already separated but still married, the police tried to coerce me into not making that report! I had to fight with them for over half an hour until they eventually agreed to write the report.
Have you ever been stalked?