‘I just want this nightmare to end’

Five years ago, Tess Gordon* was approached by a man in Barbican, St Andrew, while running weekend errands. Spooked by his comments, the then 21-year-old said she rejected his advances.

“The conversation was very creepy, he was like ‘I want to give yuh a baby, we would make cute babies’. I was not interested and I walked away,” she said.

Infuriated by her rejection, she said the man hurled insults at her which she ignored. But a few days later she started receiving text messages and calls from a strange number. It was him.

Up until this day, Gordon is still confused as to how he got her phone number, which he used to continue his unwanted and obsessive pursuit of her for years; staggering his calls and texts daily, weekly and monthly.

The stalker soon escalated his pursuit, threatening to kill Gordon and her family if he didn’t get her.

“He told me multiple times that if him eva buck mi up no where him a guh kill mi,” she shared with The Sunday Gleaner last week.

She lived in constant fear of not knowing when these calls and messages would come, and she became withdrawn.

“At the time when it started I had a lot of anxiety, I didn’t want to leave my house. Most time when I went out he would send pictures of me standing up somewhere. I hated going on the road, I don’t party because I didn’t know if he would find me,” she said.

Gordon said she thought about reporting him to the police, and spoke with an officer at the time. However, she was informed that without a full name or an address there was very little the police could do to stop his stalking. She also worried that he would hurt her and her family if she made a report.

Depressed and feeling helpless, Gordon said she had no choice but to relocate in order to protect herself and her family.

“I didn’t want to live where I was anymore. I was crying … I blamed myself because I was like ‘mi neva haffi go Barbican dat weekend, mi neva haffi come outta di house’. I was in a bad state of depression because he kept me in fear,” she said.

PROVISIONS IN TWO ACTS

Currently, Jamaica has no legislation that explicitly lists ‘stalking’ as an offence, in spite of the fact that it can escalate to physical attacks, violence and death.

In 2020, 40-year-old Damion Carter was stabbed to death at a house on Lawrence Drive, St Andrew, by a man who allegedly had been stalking his girlfriend for years. A year later, 14-year-old Danesha Cooper from Naseberry Grove, St Catherine, was stabbed and killed allegedly by a 20-year-old who, according to her relatives, would stalk her as he was angry at her attempts to end a relationship.

However, head of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at The University of the West Indies, Mona, Dr Karen Carpenter, told The Sunday Gleaner that there is no need for new laws to address stalking, as there were provisions in two pieces of legislation that dealt with it.

She explained that although the word ‘stalking’ is not explicitly stated in any law, the perpetrator can be prosecuted under both the Cyber Crime Act and the Sexual Harassment Act.

“It is not necessary to put the word ‘stalking’ under the act because the act already defines what sexual harassment is: unwanted sexual advances of a psychological, physical or emotional nature. The person can intimidate you, it’s an exercise of power over another person. So there is no need to spell out the word ‘stalking’ because it is encompassed in that definition,” Dr Carpenter said.

Under Section 9 of the Cyber Crimes Act, a person can get up to five years in prison for using a device to send another person anything that is obscene or constitutes a threat with the intention to harass or cause harm.

GET A RESTRAINING ORDER

Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay, head of the Corporate Communications Unit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), is encouraging victims of stalking to report the matter to the police immediately so that they can commence their investigations.

She is also advising victims to obtain a restraining order from the courts which will allow the police to make an arrest if breached. She, however, acknowledged that the situation can be more stressful for the victim when the stalker is unknown.

“We can use whatever resources we have available to see if we can identify the stalker, or if there is a pattern where they would turn up at a particular location on a regular basis,” SSP Lindsay said.

Although the police do not have any specific data related to stalking, SSP Lindsay said it is most common after a domestic relationship ends.

MORE SINISTER THREATS

Gordon’s stalker had stopped calling and messaging for quite some time. Now a mother of one, and working from home, she said she was finally enjoying a life free of anxiety.

That was until a few days ago, when he called her from a strange number, this time with more sinister threats.

“He was saying he wants to murder me, he wants to kill me, he wants to burn me alive. Anyweh him see mi him a guh kidnap mi. He stated that every time he drives past Barbican he remembers me and how I styled him. He told me he would never forget, him wi hold grudge fi all ten years and just kill somebody fi diss him,” she said.

The threats extended to her mother, with the stalker warning her that he would hire a contract killer to murder her.

“He was just doing a lot to get me back to the very frightened space that I was in,” she said.

And he succeeded. She became hysterical, still raw from the psychological wounds caused by his stalking.

“I never knew that this could be real, mi see this inna movie. I never knew that it was something that could happen, especially with rejection, it wasn’t a relationship, it was never something that was gonna lead up to a relationship, it was just a rejection,” she said.

Armed with only a first name and a physical description, Gordon* said she is now in dialogue with the police and intends to make a formal report.

“I just want this nightmare to end. I believe that if he calls me today, he probably a guh call me tomorrow. I no longer want to be anxious about people calling me and I don’t know the number or anxious about blocked calls,” she said.

‘VERY SERIOUS MATTER’

Labelling stalking as a “very serious matter”, psychologist Dr Leahcim Semaj emphasised that it is not something to be taken lightly as it can have significant impact on the quality of life of the victim.

“Each time the phone rings you don’t even want to answer for fear of who it may be. Once your life is covered with fear you become hyper vigilant, it disrupts your daily life so this now translates into emotional distress. Anything happens you look at the worst-case possibility, you feel very vulnerable, loss of control of your own life, it’s as if somebody else is controlling your life and you can’t do anything about it,” he said.

Unfortunately, Dr Semaj believes, stalking, which he said is perpetuated by individuals who are “emotionally disturbed”, is often not treated with the level of seriousness it should by the security forces.

“We have to find ways of dealing with these things within our own sphere of influence. So, for example, the first thing I ask somebody, especially if it is a woman, is ‘where is your father? Where is your brother? Somebody who can stand up for you, somebody who can make a phone call, who can confront the person’,” he said.

[*Name changed to protect identity]

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com