Lauren RabainoIn the good ol’ days, stalkers had to hire private investigators, trail a person behind columns in the subway station and get their hands dirty trying to obsess over their victim.
However, with the advent of online communication, a new breed has emerged: the cyberstalker.
Cyberstalking is the unrelenting pursuit of a victim online, and while its under-the-radar subtlety often gives it less credence than a physical pursuit, it can still legally be considered a form of harassment.
“What we run into more often than threats are situations where someone has unrequited love or interest,” University Police Department Detective John Edds said of online harassment complaints made by Cal Poly students.
One specific case involves Cal Poly French professor Brian Kennelly, who says he has been relentlessly pursued by an old neighbor for over a decade.
The relationship started when Kennelly was living in New York while attending graduate school, unaware that the friendly woman who lived downstairs would someday become obsessed with him.
Over ten years his senior, Maria Amendola befriended Kennelly. “We were friends as much as neighbors can be,” Kennelly said. “She was married and much older than I was, but she developed a crush on me.”
After spending a year in France, Kennelly moved to New Jersey in 1993 and remained in contact with Amendola. He kept his bike at her apartment complex and they would go out for dinner or drinks occasionally. “She obviously believed there was more to our friendship,” Kennelly explained, “and she would constantly try to move things to the next level.”
By the time he had moved back to New York to live in faculty housing at New York University, Amendola’s pursuit had escalated to the point where Kennelly instructed his doorman to tell her he was not home. Not satisfied, his stalker would leave him expensive shirts or a basket of eggs for Easter in the lobby.
“As a poor grad student I was kind of flattered,” Kennelly admitted, “and I stupidly didn’t refuse them, so I guess, given her personality, that egged her on.”
When he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, he hoped the distance would dissuade Amendola’s apparent obsession. However, daily e-mails and phone calls to his office number quickly escalated to the point where Kennelly wouldn’t answer calls for an entire year.
“I had gotten a Web site and she would follow everything I would do on my Web site.” Kennelly said.
One day, he got a message from Amendola telling him that she and her two dogs would be coming to visit for three weeks during the St. Louis World Fair, that they were staying at a hotel downtown and she wanted to meet up.
“I got creeped out because until then it had been at a distance and it was just e-mail,” Kennelly said. “Now she was actually coming.”
After bluntly telling Amendola he was not interested in seeing her, Kennelly received a phone call from her the minute the plane landed to arrange their visit. It was then that Kennelly took legal action, getting a one-year restraining order and buying a pistol for protection. She was served papers in New York and didn’t contact Kennelly for some time.
This was not, however, the end of the obsession. As Edds explains, “Some people are detached from reality and those are the people who, when you say no, keep coming.”
Amendola started e-mailing again a few months later, tracking Kennelly when he moved to San Luis Obispo two years ago, and included threatening images of torture scenes.
The attachments would include dominatrix-style women and implied, according to Kennelly, that she would be the woman and he would be the subject.
Amendola would also reportedly gain access to Kennelly’s Cal Poly Web site and somehow knew test questions he would give in class.
In copies of e-mails sent to Kennelly, Amendola’s brief text is accompanied by attachments from YouTube and other sites.
Kennelly says he approached University Police officer Wayne Lyons about the case.
“(Lyons) told me that the California laws are much stricter and he wrote (Amendola) an e-mail to tell her not to communicate with me and that she would be playing with fire.”
Kennelly didn’t hear from her for six months, but like clockwork, the e-mails eventually resurfaced.
Kennelly is considering another restraining order. However, the serious legal action he needs to completely stop the cyberstalking will require a lawyer and thousands of dollars, he says.
Both Edds and Kennelly encourage victims of cyberstalking to communicate effectively with the stalker, telling them clearly to stop.
“In my case, I think that was the mistake I made because I was basically feeding this illusion,” Kennelly said. “I suggest the person be immediately clear-cut.”
According to the California Civil Code, a person can be held liable for stalking if they make a “credible threat” to their victim.
This is later clarified to mean “verbal or written threat, including that communicated by means of an electronic communication device.”
From the legal standpoint, Edds explained that the majority of action UPD takes on cases of cyberstalking involves mediating a lack of communication.
“In order for the crime to stand up, we need to demonstrate that you have taken the reasonable action.”
If the stalking does not stop even after the victim has taken progressive action to alleviate the stalking, the victim has warrant to take legal action and begin a police investigation.