<p>Interesting re: the not changing the number–I hadn’t heard that. I imagine it would be tempting to change, but true, just ignoring the calls could serve the same purpose.</p>
<p>nysmile and Northstarmom are dead on. But I am sorry that your D is going through this. I also would change the cell number and block him on email as well as the other precautions others have encouraged. I’m having trouble figuring out why changing a phone number would be more likely to arouse anger than ignoring the calls. But agree that regardless she should stop contact at once whatever method she uses</p>
<p>Drunks are master manipulators and skilled liars there needs to be distance between your D and this young man pronto.</p>
<p>If you find there is a stalking situation, then keep the same ph# but do not respond at all, ever, to any text or any phone call. If he gets tricky and calls from alternate numbers, either only answer numbers you recognise, or let all calls go to VM and she can call back her friends.</p>
<p>My D was stalked, by a guy who needed help, but he was too scary and it was not her problem. But she went for over a year not answering her phone only returning VMs. ANY RESPONSE, even negative is an encouragement for a stalker. So, for her sake, if there is any concern of stalking, avoid all contact, don’t even announce to him no more contact, just drop it.</p>
<p>If they are in the same classes and same major, contact an advisor of that dept. Not a student helper, the long time employee who deals with emergency situations; report that her ex is showing stalker tendencies, put it on record that she hopes it will all go away, but she wants them to know. You just do not know what is going to happen, who is going to be mentally unhinged. I would not have thought my Ds stalker buy would still be trying to contact her almost 2 years later. Common sense and social graces have no place in dealing with a stalker.</p>
<p>Of course, he may not be an actual stalker, he may just be hanging on a little. If she wants to help him, that is admirable, as is staying civil with exes, many of my Ds exes are now friends, it can happen, but she has to make herself priority #1.</p>
<p>He will only accept help and make changes when he is ready, when he hits his version of bottom. It would be great to have that not involve hurting any one else, so perhaps telling the dept advisor confidentially that he is drunk dialing her all the time will allow the school to be involved? But make sure the report is anonymous.</p>
<p><strong><em>according to our info, it is best not to change the phone number, as that is your way to track the persons interest, otherwise you blithely go on with your life assuming all is well, never thinking this mad man is still obsessing on you</em></strong> </p>
<p>My Dd actually had to finish her last few classes elsewhere, with the support of the school to be in a different area than stalker boy. The large public was magnificent to deal with, putting her safety before regulations about last # of units on the home campus, etc.</p>
<p>The person in the dept who can authorise things like this is who you need, some sort of dept adviser who knows all the people to talk to in order to coordinate unusual occurrences can do it. Find the people who could sign and process a full W on medical terms/etc. That will be the person with the power and knowledge to help you. They appreciate people coming in before a disaster strikes.</p>
<p>And in most cases there is not reason to pursue a restraining order as people like this do not respect the law and the piece of paper which is difficult to enforce; if it is serious, get your DD to a new school and do not give the harasser the list of addresses on the TRO which would give him targets. If it is not this serious, that’s great!</p>
<p>That is great advice, somemom. I’d so echo what you said re: the restraining order. Lots and lots of people think it’s something helpful, but in the crim law field, I’ve seen many cases where 1) it’s just an incentive for the guy to get more angry and 2) it gives the victim/her family a false sense of security that something preventative can be done by the police.</p>
<p>That ‘tracking the obsession level’ via keeping your cell phone number is interesting. </p>
<p>Useful tips for all women/parents of girls.</p>
<p>Well, sometimes it’s necessary to get the restraining order even if you know it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. </p>
<p>The difficulty arises if something happens to which the woman reacts, and the common prosecutor/defense attorney’s reaction (depending on which side the woman is on) is, “Well, you couldn’t have been that afraid of him if you didn’t even bother to get a restraining order.” Or “Why didn’t you get a restraining order before you hit him in self-defense with the baseball bat?”</p>
<p>The problem in this sitation is that it’s almost no-win. It’s so hard to know what to do. So I reiterate my advice to seek help from Al-Anon. They’re experienced with this scenario. Thank G-d, most of us here are not.</p>
<p>Yeah, the RO is a situational thing, when my DD was stalked the attorney we consulted advised that if we could get her physically out of the area, that would be better than a RO, as the guy would just target the homes of the family members we would have to list (lots of extended family near her university) and chances were he would not follow her.</p>
<p>We moved DD to spend a month each at 3 different homes before bringing her to our home, to make sure he was not tracking her, so it was pretty serious. You are right, Chevda, the courts may very well want to see you follow the rules of the system even if they are useless, and if you stay in the area you may need to.</p>
<p>We did not want to pull a college senior out of school in the spring, it seemed crazy that we could not just tough our way through it and have her graduate on time; it was the dept adviser who told us to make safety a priority, the rest could come later and she then worked with us to make that happen. Her advice was not what DD, DH, or I wanted to hear, but it was correct. She has the perspective of years of seeing kids with issues and she was not so invested in the “must finish in June” feeling, she gave us great advice.</p>
<p>This may all be excessive for the OPs case, but they will only know that as things develop and I think it is good to hear the what ifs so that they know how to proceed if things take a turn for the worse; hopefully it is not going to develop into a true stalking situation</p>
<p>Thanks to you all for your advice. It has really made me see all this from a different aspect. I was a bit taken aback at first by how seriously a lot of you viewed his general behaviour as I was just thinking about the drinking issue. But your view on it was a needed eye opener. When they were dating her Dad and I (and other family and friends) were appalled by his behaviour which was very controlling and emotionally though not physically abusive. It was a just an awful thing to see our very intelligent daughter caught up in this situation and we were very happy when they broke up. She started getting excited about life again and making plans and actually doing the things she wanted to do which made us so happy but we were dismayed and puzzled that there was still contact. I think it is all part of the same ‘controlling’ behaviour. But as there was never physical abuse I guess I didn’t think along the ‘stalker’ lines.</p>
<p>After reading the posts I have talked with her a lot about this over the last few days. She was still of the view that she could not just sit by and let him drown. Then she had an unpleasant evening last night when she made the mistake of responding to one of his texts and was then bombarded with texts, some of them not nice and she responded (unwisely she knows) in kind and he also started trying to phone again (she had been ignoring him and it had died down a lot). Despite her telling him she did not want to even be friends with him anymore he unexpectedly turned up at her apartment later - drunk as usual. Nothing bad happened but it took a while to get him to leave. She talked to her best friend for a while afterwards and even she, who is of the same ‘can’t stand by and not help’ personality as my daughter, came to the conclusion that my D needs to keep out of it. So my daughter has now come to the decision that she will not get involved. She is not going to talk to the RA.</p>
<p>We had a long talk today about it. I told her that I thought he could become a bit stalkerish and she said she thought he already was a bit. But I do feel she had been kind of keeping the door open by responding to him. I told her she needed to shut that door firmly and not respond at all when he contacts her. That includes not responding to any pleas for help in the classes (notoriously tough science classes) he has been skipping as she realizes he has done himself in there and there is no way she can get him up to speed without falling behind on her own work (I am sure it will be ‘her fault’ if he fails the classes as everything has always been her fault in his mind). She has fallen into this trap of ‘helping’ him before. She completely agrees to all this. I think the unpleasant evening, which occurred when she was trying to study for a test for the next day, finally made her realize she has to sever all ties. So maybe a blessing in disguise as long as he now keeps his distance.</p>
<p>I don’t think he could be called a stalker at this stage because she had kept the lines of communication open and had tried to stay on somewhat friendly terms. Though he did seem to have difficulty in ‘getting’ that she does not want to hang out with him. But now she has told him point blank that she does not want to hear from him anymore so we will keep an eye on what happens next. </p>
<p>She is happier than she has been in a long long time and has a good group of friends that she hangs out with at weekends (she is a bookworm during the week as she is premed). She is hoping to be studying abroad in Europe next fall - has just started the paperwork - and if it all works out she will spent the preceding summer in Europe also. If he is still in school that will give her more physical distance. But that seems a long time away right now. As I said - we are keeping a close eye on it. Fortunately she does communicate with us about what is going on now.</p>
<p>Again thanks for all your input.</p>
<p>Somemom, what we all tend to forget, our kids as well, is that they are NOT KIDS any more. This is a very difficult time in their lives as they are still immature, yet adults. This is when the mood disorders, psychological problems, emotional issues and the hormonal rages are at peaks. It is dangerous when these things get mired in substance abuse. Some great kids had some terribly rocky years as they were on the verge of adulthood, and there is always that fear that someone will hit bottom and bring others with him. It is not that out of the question.</p>
<p>This thread is really helpful. I remembered that it existed and I really needed to read it; it took me a while to find it: the stalker thread. Now that I found it and read through everyone’s wise comments and suggestions, I have an overwhelming urge to post so the thread will bump. </p>
<p>I hope all scenarios that were ongoing at the time the original posts were written are “history” now.</p>
<p>Funny to see this thread resurrected now and realize how completely clueless I was being. Things got worse before they got better and it did turn out to be a bit of a stalker situation. It was not a continuous thing so we were a bit at a loss as to how she should deal with it. There would be little contact from the ex for a while then a barrage of calls and texts over 2-3 days. Then just as we started thinking she needed to call the police it would stop. Then after Christmas break it got really bad. He had sent the occasional text over the break and she was still ignoring him. Then the day she returned to her apartment just a barrage started - dozens and dozens of texts and calls - and he started showing up at her apartment (we are thinking he must have been checking to see if her car was there as her apartment is not anywhere near where he would be unless he made a point of going there). She tried parking her car elsewhere in the hope that he would think she was not there. This went on for about 3 days culminating in him showing up at her apartment and banging on her door and bedroom window for 45 minutes. A friend who was concerned about what was going on had come to spend a couple of days with her and she (the friend) was petrified and called her older cousin who was going to come by but then the ex suddenly left. When I heard about it the next day I told my daughter she *had *to call the police if it happened again because having male friends or friends relatives involved and things possibly getting physical would get them all in trouble with the police and the police needed to be dealing with just the ex instead of a situation involving friends where they might all be in trouble. </p>
<p>Obviously at this point we were very disturbed so after that 3 days we finally got to the stage where she agreed calling the police was the next step if he showed up at her apartment - then he suddenly stopped again. </p>
<p>Now it is back to the occasional text which she just ignores. It has been an odd pattern where it dies down then suddenly flares up again for 2-3 days, then dies down again - it is very strange. He did actually start again one weekend when she was with my son and his girlfriend. They despise him because of the way he treated my daughter when they were dating (she has since admitted to me there was physical abuse toward the end of the relationship which I suspected at the time but she always flatly denied - my son and his g/f knew about it before I did). Anyway he called about 10 times in 10 minutes (all unanswered) and my son’s g/f grabbed my daughter’s phone and let him have it with both barrels. Since then there have only been 2-3 texts (amazing that there have even been those). It seems that someone else calling him on his behaviour was effective. I watched a video by a police officer on possible ways to deal with these situations and he said sometimes (obviously not always with the worse cases) someone else talking to the person can have the desired effect. We are hoping so.</p>
<p>Yup, been there, done that. DD gave me her cell and email login so I could delete messages, once i got 31 texts & calls at 3AM, in a row as fast as they could process on her phone.</p>
<p>Stalker boy also showed up at DDs place and would not leave, DD also later admitted to be shoved & pushed, etc. It was all ugly, sordid and rather Lifetime Movie Network, not anything i thought would happen to us.</p>
<p>Ours all went down 3 years age and in 2008 she still had received calls from him, ocassionally and that is why we kept the cell number the same. Dd was frustrated about a year ago when she got calls that he could still affect her emotions. She had thought she was all over it. She knows she has some additional work to do, but getting away from the drama was a great first step. DD also knows she has to determine why some one like that could see her as a viable victim? What vibe was she giving off to appeal to him and how could she change that? She has taken a deliberate almost 2 years no men to focus on herself and grad school. She did date right after scum boy, almost to prove herself and then after about a year, took the last 2 years off and it has been good, she is now more comfortable and confident in herself.</p>
<p>Perhaps DD should document these events in some way, so that the most convincing case possible can be made if she does eventually need to call the Police.</p>
<p>You might want to contact your cell phone company to get a log of the calls/texts, and perhaps even the texts themselves - even if you deleted them, they still may exist on the company’s servers. That will help document the situation (as ADad suggested).</p>
<p>^ Yes. And maybe check the apartment for bugs, given the timing of ebbs in his aggressive behavior. I’m stunned that anyone would tell her that the very best thing to do is nothing at all (although I’ll grant it’s better than trying to “help him”).</p>
<p>He’s a drunk.
He abused her physically.
He initiates contact frequently, especially while drunk.
He tracks her comings and goings at her apartment.
He spent 45 minutes essentially holding her hostage in her apartment in an aggressive and intimidating manner.</p>
<p>And the answer is, if he does it again, then she’ll call the police? And the harassing text messages continue, but everybody’s happy that now it’s only a few of them? Please don’t delude yourselves. He hasn’t stopped; he’s just in remission again. The next time he shows up at her apartment, it may be with a gun or a meat cleaver.</p>
<p>I understand the desire to finish school at her college of choice (assuming he doesn’t put her in the hospital first), but how about getting her into a study abroad program for the next year or so, or a yearlong leave of absence that she spends out of the state? I’d get her far, far away from him as quietly as possible, then keep the apartment for another six months with a surveillance webcam hooked up and hand over her old cell phone (still active with the old number) to the police for continual tracking.</p>
<p>Or maybe rent a Charles Barkley or Refrigerator Perry look-alike to be her “new boyfriend” for the rest of her college days. :D</p>
<p>I’m with Geek Mom. And to answer the OP’s question- if this were my son wouldn’t I want someone to know he was drowning, the answer is, if this were my son, I would hope that some nice girl’s parents were savvy enough to bring in law enforcement early on before anyone gets hurt.</p>
<p>Geez,don’t you folks read the newspapers?</p>
<p>The first thing I would do if this texting is still going on is get a restraining order forbidding any calls or personal contact of any kind. If this kid has ANY sense, he just may stop once he sees there will be legal ramifications. Also, if she does have to call the police in the future, they will take her complaint much more seriously if there is an existing restraining order. If you do not want to do that, maybe a letter from an attorney sent to the ex informing him of stalker laws, penalties, etc. might scare him into leaving her alone? If it was my kid, retraining order first, call the police ASAP if ex breaks the RO.</p>
<p>“if this were my son, I would hope that some nice girl’s parents were savvy enough to bring in law enforcement early on before anyone gets hurt.”</p>
<p>I have sons, and I agree with this.
Stop ■■■■■ footing around. Get the police involved. Your D’s life could be in danger.</p>