Today is Saturday and we are looking forward to our niece, Morgan’s cousin coming over on her way back to college, now that the Thanksgiving holiday week is winding down.  It’s starting to get really cold now in the mountains – I keep hoping that since we will be going into December soon, the snow will come. stick to the ground, and this stalking will end (footprints show up really well in the snow), we can move, and everything will go back to normal.

This morning at 9:45 am Morgan’s friend B. sends her a text asking what she is up to this evening.  He says he gets off work at 5:00 pm and might want to hang out.  He tells her their friend T. is in town for Thanksgiving and he will be checking in with him to see what’s up too.  Morgan is excited and she asks that he let her know, since everyone may be getting together tonight for a mini reunion.  So far it’s been a quiet day – we all just hang out at the house, do laundry and clean up a bit.  The dogs crash out on the floor next to the couch while Morgan watches a movie.  Then Morgan gets a text from D @ 2:10 pm, “Let’s meet tomorrow then?  Call me when u wake up and let’s do this!  I so wanna spend time with u girlie!”  Morgan texted him back,  “I would love that!  Will do :)” D texted back, “xoxo!  I’m very excited. 🙂 So overdue” Morgan texts, “I agree completely.”  Later in the afternoon Morgan leaves to go pick up a friend, and Steve and I head out to the grocery store.

At 6:40 pm I send Morgan a text telling her that her cousin is on the way over to our house, and dad and I are on our way home.  I tell her if you’re not home with your friend yet please head home.  Morgan sends me back a text saying she knows her cousin is on her way, and that she is already home – she has started to bake a cake.  When Steve and I arrive home the music is playing, Morgan and her cousin are in the kitchen waiting for the cake to come out of the oven, and talking as fast as two girls can talk; trying to get in all the updates as fast as they can.  It’s so nice to feel the energy in the house.  Then Morgan stops to tell me that right after her cousin came in her friend Nathan thought he saw someone through the front door window – he walked outside and looked around, but didn’t see anyone.  This was before we got home so we checked the cameras and could see Nathan walk slowly down the driveway, look up and down the street and then go back in the house, but that is all we saw.  When our niece was ready to leave we walked her to her car, to make sure she was safe – everyone hugged, and kissed and said goodbye, never realizing that this was the last time the two girls would ever see each other.

Morgan turned to tell us her and Nathan were going out for a little while, and then they would be back at the house together later this evening – she would not be coming home alone so we could go to sleep whenever we wanted, and didn’t have to wait up for her.

Tonight at 10:57 pm (on my timeline, looking back now 11:00 pm seems to be a very popular time for the stalker) there is a loud bang – Morgan had already gotten home, but wasn’t asleep yet.  At this time we never realized the stalker was getting on the roof of our house, so of course we checked the cameras on her side of the house, but again, did not see anything.  Why didn’t we ever think he was on the roof?  I did hear sounds up in the ceiling, but there was a crawl space up there – Steve had been up there when he was installing the cameras, so he said he thought I was hearing a mouse or a bird.  The evening started out so nice and now another fitful night…

Click here to read about the 118th day of Morgan’s stalking https://morgansstalking.com/?p=2385

I recently read this submission, by someone over the Internet, and thought she summed it up rather eloquently – so please read this, as I have not approved some comments that have tried to make it on to “MY” blog, because there are still some people in this world that hold onto the belief that we should always blame the victim…which in my mind is so very wrong!

Written by Jenn: We discussed the concept of blaming the victim in my Social Psychology course. In class we learned about why this occurs. When we hear of something horrible that has happened to someone else (i.e. murder, rape, assault, etc.) this scares us. Our minds react to tell ourselves that this person made some poor choice that led to this horrible event. So, we blame the victim for using poor judgment instead of placing the blame on the offender.

Sometimes it is harder to admit that horrible things can happen to anyone regardless of who they are or what choices they’ve made. It makes us feel safe and in control to blame the victim. We think if the victim would have done something different they wouldn’t have been attacked, assaulted, kidnapped, raped, murdered, etc. Therefore if we make the right choices then we won’t be attacked, assaulted, kidnapped, raped, murdered, etc.

We must face that we live in a world where horrible things happen to good or bad people, to intelligent or naive people, to prepared or unprepared people. Our choices don’t always matter. Sometimes we even make poor choices but nothing bad happens. We walk down an unsafe alley and are not attacked. So when we hear of someone who walked down an unsafe alley and were attacked we cannot blame that person for being attacked. The offender/perpetrator should be blamed; they chose to attack, murder, rape, assault, kidnap, etc.

Understanding why we blame the victim isn’t meant to pardon this thought process but to explain it (just because something in the human thought process is explained doesn’t mean that it is right and just). Although this is a common response we should not blame the victim in order to satiate our fears. By understanding why humans do this, maybe we can stop ourselves when we start to blame the victim or when we see others do this. Being educated on why humans do certain things or think in a certain way can help us to be aware of our irrational thinking, correct it, as well as educating others on this matter.

Here are my thoughts:

Not only do the perpetrators of crime, and their supporters, engage in victim blaming, but sometimes, unknowingly, law enforcement engage in it as well when investigating reports of stalking.

From the Oxford University Press – terminology: Victim blaming
Ways of thinking about the causes of criminal victimization which seek explanations from the individual victim’s conduct and the victim’s relationship with the offender, rather than looking for wider social factors which help to explain victimization. In the context of police investigations, victim blaming can take the form of disbelieving the victim’s report of a crime being committed, or giving some types of incident lower priority on the grounds that the victim is less deserving than others.

Please read & share with others in conversation.  Facts and education are key to stopping so many criminals before they can escalate.  Especially for our law enforcement officers.

STALKERS:

Most stalkers are what Zona (1993) and Geberth (1992) call “Simple Obsessional” or, as Mullen and Pathe put it (1999) – “Rejected”. They stalk their prey as a way of maintaining the dissolved relationship (at least in their diseased minds). They seek to “punish” their quarry for refusing to collaborate in the charade and for resisting their unwanted and ominous attentions.

Such stalkers come from all walks of life and cut across social, racial, gender, and cultural barriers. They usually suffer from one or more (comorbid) personality disorders. They may have anger management or emotional problems and they usually abuse drugs or alcohol. Stalkers are typically lonely, violent, and intermittently unemployed – but they are rarely full fledged criminals.

Contrary to myths perpetrated by the mass media, studies show that most stalkers are men, have high IQ’s, advanced degrees, and are middle aged (Meloy and Gothard, 1995; and Morrison, 2001).

Rejected stalkers are intrusive and inordinately persistent. They recognize no boundaries – personal or legal. They honor to “contracts” and they pursue their target for years. They interpret rejection as a sign of the victim’s continued interest and obsession with them. They are, therefore, impossible to get rid of. Many of them are narcissists and, thus, lack empathy, feel omnipotent and immune to the consequences of their actions.
Even so, some stalkers are possessed of an uncanny ability to psychologically penetrate others. Often, this gift is abused and put at the service of their control freakery and sadism. Stalking – and the ability to “mete out justice” makes them feel powerful and vindicated. When arrested, they often act the victim and attribute their actions to self-defense and “righting wrongs”.

Stalkers are emotionally labile and present with rigid and infantile (primitive) defense mechanisms: splitting, projection, projective identification, denial, intellectualization, and narcissism. They devalue and dehumanize their victims and thus “justify” the harassment or diminish it. From here, it is only one