Stalking Laws Transcripts September 15, 1997 9 a.m. - 10 a.m. GUESTS: NICHOLAS DEWITT, ATTORNEY RHONDA SAUNDERS, LOS ANGELES DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY The following are excerpts from the viewer call-in portion of the program. Typical Signs of Stalking Protecting Yourself from Harassment Stalked by Ex-Wife Stalking in the Workplace Tips on How to Protect Yourself from a Stalker JUNE GRASSO: Good morning. I'm June Grasso, and welcome to our Monday Legal Cafe, Court TV's daily wakeup call to the law in your life. On Mondays, we look at the law and your family, an area with broad legal issues, and this morning we'll discuss stalking and some of the relatively new laws that have been enacted to combat this problem. Nicholas Dewitt is a Los Angeles attorney who represented Madonna in her much publicized stalking case, which we'll talk about later on. Thanks for coming in this morning, Nicholas. MR. DEWITT: Hi. Good morning. TYPICAL SIGNS OF STALKING MS. GRASSO: You know is there a typical kind of stalking, where it begins in a relationship and ends in violence? MR. DEWITT: Well, that's one of the most typical kinds, but there's other situations where there was no real relationship between the person and the person who's being stalked, but there's simply an obsession. For example, in the Madonna case, there was no relationship between the person who stalked her and her, but he had an obsession about her, and that's what caused him to do the acts that he did. MS. GRASSO: Now, when it's an obsession case -- and those you usually hear about with celebrities -- but are there regular, average people who have obsession cases, who have people they've never met all of a sudden going after them and stalking them? MR. DEWITT: Yes, there are, and it happens not so much -- that is not as frequent as it would be in a celebrity case, because in a celebrity case, there's a vision or an idea of what that person would like, because people think that they know that person through television or movies or whatever. But there can be that type of situation even when the person who's being stalked isn't a celebrity, yes. MS. GRASSO: Is there any particular profile of a stalker? For example, it seems, an average person looking at it, that it would be someone who would be very obsessive in some aspects of their life. Are there warning signals that should go off in your head if you know someone with some particular kind of characteristics? MR. DEWITT: There are, but it's hard to say that there's only one type of profile. MS. GRASSO: And joining us now from the Court TV newsroom is Rhonda Saunders, a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles who works on the stalking and threat assessment team, and she actually prosecuted and won a conviction against Robert Hoskins, the man who stalked Madonna. Good morning, Rhonda, and thanks for coming in as well from Los Angeles this morning. MS. SAUNDERS: Thank you for having me here. MS. GRASSO: Rhonda -- and as I was talking with Nicholas -- is there a profile of a stalker, a kind of person that you should definitely stay away from. MS. SAUNDERS: Anybody can be a stalker and anybody can be a stalking victim. You'll find stalkers in every walk of life. I mean, you'll have transients such as Robert Hoskins, who stalked Madonna, but then you'll also have doctors and lawyers, police officers -- anybody can be a stalker, so they don't really fall into a neat category. Victims -- victims can be men or women. I mean, you hear primarily about women being stalked, but I know I've handled several cases where you've had a man as a victim. MS. GRASSO: Now, Rhonda, what makes a difference for whether these cases end in tragedy, in death, or in serious injury, and whether the stalking just stops? MS. SAUNDERS: A lot of times the stalking doesn't stop. The stalking escalates, as Mr. Dewitt was talking about. The most violent and the most dangerous types of stalking cases involve domestic violence, because there has been a long-term relationship, and there's been some studies done that show that there's more of an incidence of serious bodily injury or murder when you have had a relationship in which the party or the victim finally leaves. When that person leaves, the anger and the rage of the stalker increases, and this translates eventually into violence. You do have your celebrity types of cases, and we've seen where that has resolved itself in violence, too -- we've seen the John Lennon type of case, the Rebecca Schaefer. Stalking is a crime of conduct that can lead to rape, murder. However, with stalking laws in this country, it allows prosecutors and law enforcement to try to intervene before we wind up with a dead body. MS. GRASSO: All right. We're going to talk about some of those laws in a moment. Nicholas, can you describe, since you represented Madonna, mostly what -- especially for movie stars or television stars, that it wouldn't be as difficult if they're being stalked, because they have security guards, they have body guards, they have -- and they're used to attention that's probably unwanted, in many respects. What's it like for a stalking victim, the kind of fears and the changes in everyday life that they undergo? MR. DEWITT: I think it's one of the most frightening things that somebody can go through, whether you're a celebrity or whether you're not. I know that in Madonna's case, she testified to how fearful she was. I mean, she was afraid for her life, because this person, Hoskins, who stalked her was, you know, very violent, made very vile and horrible types of threats against her, and it just puts you on edge for the whole time, and it's something that you cannot get out of your mind. And you've seen that with other celebrity type cases, and I'm certain that it's the same way in all of the domestic cases that Rhonda was referring to. MS. GRASSO: We're going to talk more about what you can do if you're being stalked or if you feel a situation is going to escalate into that. PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM HARASSMENT I want to go to our phones right now, and our first caller is from Florida. Good morning, Esther. Do you have a question for us about stalking? Q What's happened is for several months now, there's this guy that's been leering at me, and if I sat in the lunchroom, he would sit where I was, that kind of thing like that -- so I completely changed my routine, and I go to the second break room or I go outside or whatever, like that. Well, after a talk at work about sexual harassment, the next time he did that, leered at me, I told him that what he was doing was sexually harassing me, and that if he didn't stop, I was going to tell someone. Well, what he did was he beat me to the punch and he put in a sexual harassment grievance against me at work, and what he's done now is got his whole group of friends -- he's got this big clique at work -- MS. GRASSO: Right. Q -- he's got this whole big clique, and they like -- they form a gauntlet in the hallway, you know, waiting for me. People are shouting things at me. I've had somebody try to follow me home, and I guess I don't know -- MS. GRASSO: What to do about it. Have you spoken to your boss at all about it? Q I've gone to my union, and I've -- I've gone to my union, and I think I want to tell my boss about it. You know, it's like I said, he's turned this around on me -- MS. GRASSO: Right, exactly. So you're -- now, Rhonda, first let me ask you. This doesn't sound like a classic stalking situation. Is this stalking or is it harassment, and what's the difference? MS. SAUNDERS: Right now, it sounds more like harassment. However, there are certain things that this person can do to help protect herself, and the main thing is to document -- and this is something we tell victims. She needs to write down every time she finds this person following her, harassing her. Write down the time, the date it happened. Look around. See if there were any independent witnesses, people who were working there, people on the street, so that she has some type of a record, and she definitely should bring this up to her boss. They need to know in her office what is going on. Also, while this harassing conduct was taking place originally, I'm sure she must have told friends of hers or there must have been people -- yeah, there must have been other people who knew about it. You need to document this, put this down in writing. MS. GRASSO: Esther, do you have -- I mean, are you afraid? Is it annoying, or are you really fearful? Q I'm afraid because he's involved groups of people in it now. He's got his friends, you know, he's got them involved, although this is supposed to be a hush thing, quiet -- until they complete their investigation. He's got other people involved I guess in a retaliatory thing to help him -- and that's what I'm afraid of. MS. GRASSO: Yeah -- now, Nicholas, is there anything that you would suggest? I mean, a lot of times if it's one person, you can try to get a temporary restraining order -- MR. DEWITT: Right. I think that the most important thing to do -- I'll just reiterate what Rhonda said, and that is to -- you have to document every incident that happens, because before you can go in and get a temporary restraining order in this situation, you have to put together a declaration for the court and the judge to look at, and that declaration would have to outline all of the incidences that have occurred, when they occurred, how they occurred, and exactly what happened. So I think that's the best place to start, is by making a complete record, a complete documentation of what's happened so that you'll be able to then take it -- you'll be able to explain that you talked to your boss about it, nothing's been done, and if necessary, then you'd have to go talk to a lawyer. MS. GRASSO: You don't want Esther to get paranoid, but should she have -- try to have somebody with her at all times, like not go into the lunch room alone, not walk home alone or get into her car? MR. DEWITT: Well, you know, I wouldn't want to get her paranoid, but I think in terms of building the record for trying to get to court, it's always helpful to try to have another witness to the incidences that are being complained of, so that if you do have a friend who would come along with you to the lunch room, be able to verify that the conduct that you're talking about has occurred and be a second witness to all of it, that obviously would be helpful. MS. GRASSO: All right. Thanks so much, and good luck to you, Esther. We hope your situation improves. STALKED BY EX-WIFE Let's see what your concerns are. Jill from Nevada. Good morning, Jill. How are you this morning? Do you have a question about stalking? Q Yes, I do. I'm in a situation where the ex-wife -- well, first of all, let me explain that my husband divorced his first ex-wife -- actually, she was -- asked to have the divorce, and they had a 1-year-old daughter, and, let's see, when the daughter was 2-1/2 years old, we married, and we have been very happy together, except that we've had great, great turmoil and it turns out that my stepdaughter has a lot of turmoil, you know, inside. She is about -- will be 9 years old soon. MS. GRASSO: Okay. Q And actually what happened is that the mother has immediately taken great dislike to me, and actually she stalked our house on a number of occasions and mouthed the words, "I hate you. I'll kill you" and -- to me, and other kinds of things like that, and we have tried to keep the peace as well as possible, but we have not gotten adequate representation legally. We went to the legal system recently -- MS. GRASSO: Jill, may I stop you for one second and just ask you, how long has this been going on? Because as far as I can tell, it's been -- you've been married about 10 years, over 10 years? Q Well, no, actually we've been married about seven years. MS. GRASSO: Seven years. Okay. And has this stalking been going on since the beginning or recently? Q Well, no. It has stopped periodically because of the court proceedings, so her attorney's warned her about that. But as far as the behavior towards me, it continues. The very mean looks, the breaths -- the daughter's afraid to call us. There's a lot of alienation going on. But in the court proceedings, actually the mother was able to really pull one over on the -- MS. GRASSO: What happened? Q Well, what we got was increased visitation, but the actual problems were never addressed. MS. GRASSO: So you never actually got any kind of an order that told her what to -- what she could or could not do -- Q No. MS. GRASSO: -- in your presence? Okay. Let me first go to Nicholas Dewitt. What would you suggest? This is a very complicated situation, because they have to see, or they want to see, her husband's daughter, and they want to visit with her, so they almost have to have contact with the mother in some sense. MR. DEWITT: They do. As I understand the facts, the daughter is with the ex-wife, is that right? MS. GRASSO: Right. MR. DEWITT: And so they do, and it also illustrates the fact that stalking or threats like this aren't necessarily limited to a man making those -- MS. GRASSO: Right. MR. DEWITT: -- type of threats. Sometimes they do come from a woman. I think -- you didn't go into the problems that you had with respect to the court proceedings, but the best way to handle that, given the facts that you've outlined, would be through the courts. Unfortunately, the courts, I think anybody would acknowledge, are not perfect and are not always going to be in a position to address all of the concerns, but if you haven't had the relief you want, maybe you need to talk to a different lawyer. Maybe you need to ask that the judge that's been handling the case, if it's possible to be recused and get a different judge, but it sounds like your best remedy is through the court system, unless you want to be prepared to simply cut off contact or move away. MS. GRASSO: Jill, let me ask you this. Have you actually tried to go to court and get any kind of a restraining order against her to stop from approaching you or anything like that, or is it too difficult because you're trying to see your stepdaughter? Q That's -- we're very careful about -- we are very careful so as not avoid getting our holidays, our regular weekend visitation. She, once the court -- once the court proceeding was over, she really has gone back to the old type of behavior, and I'm still trying to -- we're also trying to maintain peace over here, and the daughter is very concerned. MS. GRASSO: All right. Rhonda, do you have any suggestions because of the situation being so delicate? MS. SAUNDERS: I would agree with Mr. Dewitt, that basically she would have to use the court system. Go back. If the conduct is increasing, escalating at this point, a restraining order might be in order, even though there is that issue of visitation. We've had cases like -- similar to this in Los Angeles, and arrangements have been made, for example, for the custodial parent to either drop the child off at a third party's house -- a grandmother's house -- or to have a third party go and pick up the child from the custodial parent. There is no reason why this person, who has been showing up at the victim's house, needs to be doing that, and with a restraining order keeping her maybe 500 yards away from the house, not to annoy or harass the victim, this itself would give her some type of legal relief. But she needs to take that step to do something, because by not doing anything, this has been going on for seven years. The problem's not going to solve itself. MS. GRASSO: All right, Jill, so you do have some options, and we wish you good luck with that situation. STALKING IN THE WORKPLACE We're taking your questions and comments on stalking laws, and I have Sandy from New York standing by. Good morning, Sandy. You're on Legal Cafe. Are you being stalked? Is that -- do you have a problem? Q Yes, I was stalked by a co-worker, and I've been since terminated, but while I was on the job, I received phone calls first from the new employee, and I asked him to stop calling me, and I reported it to my boss, and he told me to get my number changed. And I said, "Why should I get my number changed because this man is calling me at home?" And I finally had to tell the man if he didn't stop calling me at home that I'd report him to the police. MS. GRASSO: Did he approach you at work in any way? Q He used to -- like what you were calling leering? He used to stand in my aisle where I was working, and he would, like, look at me like he was going to kill me. MS. GRASSO: And so what did you end up -- did you ever take any action -- Q I went to management and I reported it and then he wrote me a letter or a note and he signed it and he addressed it to me, and it was implying that he was going to come kill me. It was written on the back of a memo about someone else who was murdered by their husband. MS. GRASSO: Oh! Q And anyway, I kept reporting this to management, what he was doing to me, and they didn't do anything, and so finally the man assaulted me in front of us women at work, and I reported it to the head of security. He was a retired police detective, and he says, "Why are you coming to me? Go to the police station and report it there," because I was going to call 911. MS. GRASSO: Right. Q So what they did is supported me out and told me not to come back to work until they called me. MS. GRASSO: Okay. Go ahead. Q Anyway, I walked out of work -- I was escorted out, so I couldn't get any witnesses, and I went to the police precinct. Then the company attorney then appeared with the investigation, and they told me I'd lost my job, and the police told me now it's a labor issue and not a criminal issue. MS. GRASSO: Now, did he -- when you said he assaulted you, he physically assaulted you? Q He physically punched me. MS. GRASSO: He punched you? Q He was punching me and pushing me. MS. GRASSO: And what about -- is he still at that same place, working there? Q Yes, and I told the police department he's going to do this to somebody else, and what I originally wanted was the order of protection to convey the message to my job that this man was threatening me and that I shouldn't have to work with him, and I had something in writing that I gave them that he wrote it in blood red, and then when I was terminated from my job and they told me it was a labor issue and to go to the EEOC and file charges with them and I went to the EEOC, I started getting hangup calls and nails in my tires, and I live in another county. MS. GRASSO: All right. Well, you have a couple of problems here, Sandy, and you definitely -- if there's no reason for your termination, you may have an EEOC thing, but let's try to deal with the stalking. First, let me go down to the newsroom. Rhonda, you mentioned before when we were off air that stalking in the work place is becoming rather prevalent. MS. SAUNDERS: Absolutely. We're seeing more and more of these types of cases where you have one co-worker obsessing on another, or someone who is terminated directing their anger towards a supervisor who has fired them, so we're seeing incidences actually turning into violent conduct, shootings, et cetera. We've seen this across the country. With the person who's calling in right now, I think I need to emphasize that if there is criminal conduct, such as repeated phone calls, these all should be reported to the police at the earliest time. There are certain things that can be done to track these phone calls. This is evidence that can be used later on. With the assault, there had to have been someone there who saw it or had -- she must have had some type of bruise on her. She should have gone immediately to the police and documented -- again that word "documentation" -- to leave a paper trail. MS. GRASSO: Nick, you know, I've heard that sometimes you almost have to prove your case to the police before they'll go -- every state has stalking laws. Should you first of all get a copy of the stalking laws so you know exactly what's entailed in it and then really document your case and you have to actually go to the police and convince them, almost, in some instances. MR. DEWITT: Yes, generally speaking, the way it will work is you have to convince the police or some law enforcement agency that a crime has been committed, and then the police or the law enforcement agency refer to the matter out to the district attorney's office or the prosecuting agency for a final decision as to whether or not to go forward. That's in a criminal context. In a civil context, you can get restraining orders on the civil side without the involvement of the police, just between the private lawyers and the court, so you have to make a distinction between stalking which reaches an actual crime level and things that you can do before that happens in the civil context, where you simply, as we said, document what has happened, hire a lawyer, and go in and get a civil restraining order, and that's a big difference between having to go criminally. MS. GRASSO: And you can get a civil order and, for example, someone that you're working with, a restraining order -- I mean, they wouldn't want to stop the person from going to work, you don't want to stop going to work. How would a restraining order work in that kind of context? MR. DEWITT: Well, in that type of context, it would work -- I think the corporation would have an obligation to get involved, as well, and I would mention to the last caller, I think that you indicated you brought it to the attention of management and they didn't do anything. I'm a little surprised to hear that, because the corporation would have an obligation, and certainly corporations are much more aware of the work place violence issues now over the last years than they have been before. The corporation very well may have to move one or the other to a different work location to honor the type of restraining order that might be in place, may be obligated to provide some type of protection in the form of a guard to be able to walk to your car, and items like that, and so you simply need to -- it's driven by, really, the facts of the situation, but you need to be aware of the obligations that the corporation has, as well. TIPS ON HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM A STALKER MS. GRASSO: We just have a few minutes left in this hour of Legal Cafe, where we're discussing stalking and what you can do about it. Rhonda Saunders -- Rhonda, tell me what about contingency plans. What, on a practical level -- forget about the legal level -- a person who's being stalked should do and have in place? MS. SAUNDERS: I think the most important thing is to let other people know about the situation, because this way you have another pair of eyes. Let the people at work know, let your neighbors know so that your neighbors can keep an eye out if they see the same car driving by your house, if they see someone lurking by your windows, they'll know that there is a situation and that the police need to be notified, that you need to be told. At work, it's very important for your co-workers to know what's happening there, so that if someone comes to work and demands to see you, they know that this is someone who should not have contact with you. Besides that, you should not be predictable in your routine. For example, if you take the same street to work every single day, you should vary your routine. You should try to park in a different place, if your employer will allow you to do that, at work. You should make sure that if you leave the office late at night that there is someone with you to walk you to your car. At home, you may have to change your phone number. However, it would pay to get a second telephone number. Keep your old number with an answering machine, because a lot of times, stalkers will call and leave messages, and it's dynamite evidence, because stalkers are not all that smart, and you'd be amazed at the types of things that they'll leave on the phone. And when you go to court, that's what a jury wants to see and hear. Join other groups, support groups, so that you'll know that you're not alone. I think there's such a feeling of vulnerability, of being alone in the world that victims of stalkers feel, and they need to know that there are other people out there that can help them that have been through the same process. MS. GRASSO: All right. Rhonda Saunders, thanks so much for that practical advice and the legal advice as well that you've given about stalking victims. We appreciate it so much. MS. SAUNDERS: You're welcome. MS. GRASSO: And, Nicholas, just a final word from you. Do you think our stalking laws are tough enough? MR. DEWITT: Well, they are getting tougher. As we saw at the beginning, with federal -- now for the first time there's a federal law. I think that this whole issue, particularly, has risen in the public awareness, in the politicians' awareness, and they're getting tougher, and I think they should get tougher, so we're heading in the right direction. MS. GRASSO: We're heading, and that's the best we can hope for in the legal system sometimes. Nicholas Dewitt, thanks so much -- MR. DEWITT: Thank you. MS. GRASSO: -- also for coming in from California. MR. DEWITT: Thank you very much. MS. GRASSO: We enjoyed having you here. MR. DEWITT: Thank you. MS. GRASSO: And that's a wrap for hour one of Legal Cafe, but there's a lot more coming your way in hour two.