So I was watching a television episode about women who were stalked. The stories were about some women who didn’t survive and others who did. A lot of people I know worry about how now days there are so many ways to “put yourself out there” especially when it comes to electronic media, from Internet to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more. Although I’ve always thought that it was more likely for me to be stalked by someone who saw me at a grocery store or the in the mall. It made me think when I realized how random most of the cases were. Although it was true that most of the stalkers knew the victims it wasn’t like a friendship or most of the time the victim didn’t know the stalker at all. So maybe the stalker went to the same school or worked in the same building and obsessed about the woman.
I often think about how close I came to possibly being a victim of some violent crime when I was 20 and was being stalked by someone that I believe had to be a security guard at my apartment complex. It first started when I left my apartment one morning and found a pair of women’s panties hanging on my door knob. There was a poem written on them… something about watching me and my perky nipples and then it said something about the color of my panties. I figured it was some stupid joke until several nights afterwards I continued to get the same sick poems on panties on my doorknob overnight. When we realized that the panty color mentioned in the poem coincided with the color of panties I wore to bed the night before it became obvious that someone was actually watching me through my window. So my husband at the time went outside and sure enough if you put your eye right up against the window which happened to be above my bed you could look between the cracks of the blinds where the string went up and down them and if you focused carefully you could see perfectly into my master bath where every night my routine included stripping down to my panties before I would shut the door to get completely naked to get in the tub.
My husband tried to catch the guy by sitting inside the house right next to the door all night with a baseball bat but inevitably would end up falling asleep. After a couple of weeks we called the police. Well that was around 1987 and back then there was no clear stalking law. So I was told by the police that I should keep the panties in a plastic bag as evidence in case the guy got bored with watching me and actually broke in and raped me. Then I’d have important evidence. Ok. that made me feel real safe!!! So I freaked out and after complaining to the apartment complex over and over and they swore they had extra security watching my apartment I was convinced it was the security guy himself. So they consented to us breaking our lease and we moved.
Fortunately for me the guy either just wasn’t smart enough to figure out where I moved to or just gave up and moved on to another target. Now, some 22 years later I am training in martial arts (Chun Kuk Do). I totally wish I had done so at a younger age but unfortunately it was too expensive then and I couldn’t afford it. I think that there should be free self defense programs or martial arts programs for women of all ages. Since women are most likely the victims of these stalking crimes and often become victims of more violent acts, rape and sometimes murder, it makes sense to train them so that those attackers are at least possibly a little bit intimidated by the fact that they may not be more powerful than that small looking woman they are about to attack.
I’ve been taking martial arts classes for over 2 years now and I’m more than halfway to my black belt and I hope I never have to use my training but looking back on that incident that happened in my 20’s and recognizing that my face is all over the Internet and now that I’ve authored a book, I realize that there is always a possibility of luring in some psycho stalker. I realize that I may not be able to defend myself from every situation but I will be much more prepared in the event that I do become a victim. And God forbid they end up killing me.. they will for sure leave their dna under my nails, in my teeth, on my knuckles, and pretty much all over the crime scene because I will make sure to take a big chunk of their flesh before they leave me. I will definitely not die without a serious fight!
