Only recently have criminologist and victimologists started to study the problem of harassing, intrusive and reiterated behaviours damaging someone, defined by the English term stalking.

In America, only in the nineties, after a tragic event involving a famous person in California, did they start to discuss and study this phenomenon in ordr to identify its characteristics and possible intervention solutions. Until that time, no autonomous normative framework had ever been organised always recurring to crimes such as menace, damage, aggression and violence in general without defining the specific nature of this event. When defining stalking, we see diverse types of the situations. One of these has an obvious psychiatric meaning with delirious manifestations, often of erotomaniacal nature whereas the other concerns relations which finishedbadly and interest ex-partners or ex-spouses who are unable to work out separation and accept the relationshipìs ending. The phenomenon prevalently regards women.

As for the psychiatric problems, of a clearly psycotic nature, we can speak of about 10% of the subjects at present reported, in quick growth also because probably in the past they had not been reported. With regard to the psychiatric aspects, these cases of erotomania described by De Clerambault roughly a century ago.

On a legislative level, in the present-day Italian norms stalking is included in the sphere of the crime of harassment, i:e: article 660 pf the Penal Code, which foresees arrest lasting up to six months with a fine. It should in any case be noted that said definition is of no help in facing these characteristic manifestations in an adequate manner. In Italy, a group in Modena has recently published a study on stalking conducted by Laura De Fazio and Gianmaria Galeazzi, financed by the European Community in the Daphne Project “Il problema delle donne vittime di stalking” (the problems of women victims of stalking – recognition and intervention models in the European area)

During this work, the results of the interviews carried out by policemen, doctors, families in various European countries, Belgium, England, Italy and Holland were compared and discussed within this European project with comparative analysis. There is an undeniable, obscure number of inadequate norms on this phenomenon as well as insufficient police intervention, feelings of reserve and shame resulting in the person’s, victim of stalking, not denouncing it. The term, originating from an English hunting term, brings to mind prey ambushing and chase. The phenomenon of stalking therefore deals with the chase after a prey and therefore concerns a hunter, his prey and the various attitudes ranging from surveillance, persistent research for contact, control, to the posting of unwelcome communications by the harasser to the receiver, his victim. Stalking “can be defined as a recognisable behavioural syndrome originating from a pathology of inter-personal relations and communications”. already in the past there had been, in literary spheres, numerous cases of transcription of this phenomenon and psychiatry was involved partly through psycho-pathological syndromes such as erotomania. Only after the nineties. stalking acquired its originality and peculiarity and was given consideration sometimes as a social problem, sometimes a scientific theme, sometimes a juridical one, with replies from legislators, scholars and psychologist.on both the victim’s and the harasser’s side, with study of both the victim and stalker, i.e. the harasser.

At a scientific level, many terms have been used to define the relations of intrusion, characterised by stalking, ranging from stalking itself to obsessional harassment or criminal harassment, obsessional tailing, obsessional relational intrusion, tormenting harassment and insistent harassment, another term was dioxis or in French harcèlement du troisieme type or belaging. At present the term stalking has earned itself, in the scientific world, its own peculiarity and has been recognised internationally. The characteristic of stalking is that of being addressed quite often to well-known personalities, to the point where we speak of doing stalking i.e. just the following, disturbing, and harassing of people in the show-business world by over-excited fans. The term stalking describes “not an action punctually circumscribable but re-unifies a series of actions repeated in time comprehending the character of surveillance, control, research, contact and/or communication perceived by the receiver as capable of provoking, as indeed they provoke, worry and fear”. It is clearly visible here that there is an inevitable arbitrary element just because it is impossible to define the maximum or minimum number of harassing events necessary to define stalking over a specific period of time not to mention the seriousness of the events. Some authors reported that it would have been useful to have a high threshold of these episodes, at least ten over more than a month, as suggested by Mulen, Pathé, Purcelland Stuart in 1999. The difficult task – that of eliminating the “false positives” – must be important in analysing this phenomenon and in particular in the study of its characteristics. It is equally difficult to define when the stalking behavour starts, just because the confine of this beginning can be very vague; often, it happens at the end of a relationship with all the juridical passages it requires – separation, divorce – and it is difficult in these cases to understand when the behaviours connotate with some stalking or through a difficult relationship between two people who have interrupted a marriage or co-habitation relationship.

The actions characterising stalking can be not only legitimate actions, such as for example offering a rose, which can however clearly become an act of stalking in a well-defined context but also other times there are actions with characteristics of crime such as, for example, home violation or violation of norms possibly pre-arranged by a judge in a phase of separation, for example. Other illegal actions are explicit menace and cases of violent behaviour. However, the most difficult elements to evaluate are those referring to the victim’s background, i.e. the unease, the worry and the fear stalking can provoke. In this case too, the authors suggest the use of criteria of subjective sufferance because it is subjective and poses problems of comparison and even definition extremely difficult to face. We can pass from bother to unease, from slight disturbance to dread, from fear to real terror. Very often these represent the various reactions, typical escalations of many stalking campaigns.

The reactions of victims are also connected with the cultural context of appartenance. In this case, for example, women can be more sensitive and therefore have a more rapid evolution in escalation with respect to men towards really tru e threat. We should also remember the problem of false victims originating not from stalking behaviours but rather from an internal pathological situation ranging from genuine persecution delirium to situations where fear for their columnity exists. Diffusion of stalking is very difficult due to the ambiguous definition. In some studies, mention is made of 1-4% of the adult female population or 0.4-2% of the male one in the last twelve months while, for a life-time we pass from 8-17% of women to 2-7% of men. The majority of the victims, according to the studies analysed to date, are women, harassed by acquaintances or ex-partners. Stalkers use various ways of harassing, with a major frequency of episodes of violence ranging from 20-40% of cases due above to ex-partners. In the Tyaden and Thoennes studies in 1998 it reached 81% of cases. Only a third of the victims goes to the police according to Morris (2002) and, in particular, of these, 47% declared they were unsatisfied with their contact with the police. Legally speaking, only in 1990 in California can we find the first anti-stalking legislation followed by few countries Canada and Australia which discussed laws on the theme of stalking. In Canada a law was enacted in 1993 and in Australia the Criminal Harassment Law in 1995. In Europe the normative discipline didn’t have a homogenious history with several legislative re-makes occurring during these last years. Some states have introduced ad hoc legislations while others have adopted laws not expressly referring to stalking In Europe, Great Britain was the first and in 1997 issued a law on the matter: It is the Protection From Harassament Act protecting victims of harassment and similar conduct, among which stalking. Other countries like Belgium and Holland have issued specific anti-stalking legislation. France, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Ireland however do not have any autonomous legislation but stalking is persecuted by making reference to other laws.

In Belgium, stalking was recognised in 1998, in Holland in 2001 through a penal code law. In Italy, only last year (2009) was approved a law against stalking. At a European level, these are civil law norms, denominated “protection and restriction orders” protecting the victim of stalking or domestic harassment. Among these prescriptions, we can also find the possibility of imposing on a subject particular resctrictions and so violations are sanctioned penally. These orders can last for variable or limited periods and can be renewed. Stalking is a field of multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary study which involves the socialogical, legal medical, legal psychiatrical competences of penal justice. Present-day research is trying to propose new typologies for classifying harassers and the replies to victims. Attempts are being made to identify the risk factors of violent aggression, also distinguishing between episodes of serious violence and less serious ones (see Giams and Fannam, 2003). Some other studies, such as the Kamphuis one of 2003, are trying to identify victim treatment programmes. Other studies, for example the Grunem one, are trying to study and identify the paths of the request for help, the efficiency of the protection order and the problem of relapse.

According to some samples analysed in literature and percentages, specific behaviours of stalking are as follows :

• Receiving unwelcome telephone calls – 89%
• Involvement of third parties – 82%
• Gossip and lies – 82%
• Tailing at work and/or at home – 79%
• Road stalking – 75%
• Unwelcome visits – 74%
• Menace of violence – 74%
• Unwelcome post – 70%
• Gleaning information with deceipt – 65%
• Property damage – 64%
• False accusation – 45%
• Violence – 55%
• Assets ordered from third parties on behalf of the victim vittima – 23%
• Habitation smearing – 19%
• Telematic stalking – 2%
• Other – 40%

According to a study using the impact events scale (IES) of diverse traumatic events, stalking reaches a core second only to the Post-traumatic Stress Syndrome and is superior to those concerning care accidents or robbery. This scale, proposed by Horowitz in 1979, tries to define the entity of the victim’s trauma which is studied in particular for the acute post-traumatic stress syndrome. The most repeated replies by the victim regard loss of privacy, experiences of violence which sometimes included children, presistence of violence leading to a sense of impotence and constant emotional pressure and anxiety often leading to psychological disturbances . Often, stalking leads to a really true post-traumatic stress syndrome and many authors have tried to estimate exactly what percentage of people suffering stalking then develops a post-traumatic stress syndrome. In some cases it reaches 30%. The stalker is often described literally as a psychotic woman, with a borderline personality. Often, therefore the ex-partners are the ones doing the stalking. In any case, the people doing the stalking belong to a group, sometimes heterogenious, which presents various psycho-pathologies.

According to Zona et Al. (1993) we can define three groups of people who are stalkers: The classical tormenting harasser “generally it is a woman who wrongly believes that a more mature and more upper-class man is in love with her”

The possessive lover “typical psychotic stalker aiming at famous people or total strangers”

A simply obsessive, tormenting harasser who starts the stalking after an effective relationship finished badly, leaving him with a deep sense of rancour for what he or she has perceived as refusal or wrong-doing.

Muller, Pathé, Purcell and Stuart in 1999 divided the stalker into five groups:

• The rebuked stalker, who had relations with the victim and is often characterised by a mixture of revenge and desire for reconciliation.
• The stalker looking for intimity, including people with erotomania type delirium
• The inadequate courter, generally intellectually limited and socially inadequate
• The grudging stalker whose objective is to frighten and harass the victim
• The predatory stalker predatore, who projects a sexual aggression

According to some studies, the stalker has been described as a person who functions relatively well but with extreme sensitivity in refusing abandonement or loss 10% has penal precedents and a general lack of anxiety or sense of blame. 3% were seriously or psychotic yet in some studies didn’t fit in with the definition of the victims. In fact, according to the victims, in studies by Horowitz in 1991 and Kamphuis in 2003, insecure attachment was to be found in the majority of cases. Three stalkers out of four were described as insecure, afraid, anti-social and worried in their style of attachment.

What must be done to prevent and estimate individual risk?

All the victims of stalking think that, at the end, the stalker will become more violent. An individual evaluation is necessary to define the risk of violence and some studies have attempted to do so. The following risk factors are those which can mainly predict an evaluation of individual risk

• Psychotic stalkers are not more violent than the non-psychotic ones (Kienelen in 1997) They can even be less violent (Rossenfeld and Harmon 2002)
• Psychotic stalkers tend more frequently to harass strangers or acquaintances rather than ex- partners (Farnham 2002)
• Erotomania stalkers with multiple victims and anti-social behaviours are more violent than the erotomania stalkers with only one victim and no anti-social behaviour (Menzies 1995)
• Intimate ex-partner stalkers are more inclined to recurr to violence than the non-intimate ones.
• Men: case of violence increases the risk of violence. Episodes of serious violence are to be associated with the absence of penal proceedings and the state of working.
• Precedents of drug abuse are predictive of violent behaviour yet not so serious as homicide.
• On relapse there are still very few studies, with the following results: 50% of the people who have stalked has already had a relapse episode
• The majority of the crimes is reiterated within a year from prison release.

Among the risk factors of relapse, we should remeber: the young age, the ex-partner stalker, precedents of drug addiction and personality disturbances portraits. Between 18-70% of the stalkers subject to probatory or restrictive provisions violate these measures. After a probatory or restrictive provision, menacing and other stalking behaviours, with time, considerably reduce but not more than those of stalkers not subject to said measures.