The U.S. Department of Justice statistics suggest that 850,000 American adults—mostly women—are targets of cyber-stalking each year.
Persistent online attacks disproportionately target women. Cyber-harassment is a matter of civil rights law, Citron contends, and legal precedents as well as social norms of decency and civility must be leveraged to stop it.
Right now, there are a handful of ways victims can address their attackers through the legal system.
At its most basic legal definition, “cyber-stalking is a repeated course of conduct that’s aimed at a person designed to cause emotional distress and fear of physical harm,” said Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law.
Citron told me that cyber-stalking can include threats of violence (often sexual), spreading lies asserted as facts.
So in states with specific cyber stalking and harassment laws, victims can press criminal charges against their online stalkers and harassers.
However, Judge Steven Statsinger of the Criminal Court of the City of New York , with respect to the charge of aggravated harassment, the offense requires the defendant to have communicated with the victim, either anonymously or otherwise.
“This activity is not just a wrongful assault online, it is unjust discrimination…singling out [victims] because of their sex,”
These are clearly examples of gendered attacks, and could, theoretically, be prosecuted as such.
laws, what should women who face harassment online do? There are some initial steps victims can take to protect themselves.
Am now on step 2, moving forward.
Online Harassment Stalking
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Re: Online Harassment Stalking
They got no ground from me either. If all they've got is a keyboard, then I'm sorry for their luck. No keyboard ever harmed anyone that I know of.