A note from the author: In January 2016 I was alerted by a reader that a link contained below was dead. When this post was published in June of 2014, this — “Department of Justice 1999 study” linked to a live webpage — “http://www.justice.gov/criminal/cybercrime/cyberstalking.htm.”
Since that page no longer exists, the reader suggested I link instead to the following “Cyberstalking Guide”: Cyberstalking: What You Need to Know to Stay Safe Online.
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As the radical political left enjoys victories in their efforts to pull American culture down deeper into the sewer, an increasing number of conservatives, and especially Christian conservatives, experience the lefties’ wrath. BarbWire contributor Robert Oscar Lopez recently wrote about the challenges faced by those who work in higher ed but don’t bow down to the liberal party line:
Lately, there has been so much news about the academy’s leftism going insane, it would take about ten consecutive articles to rehash all that’s happened in the first half of 2014:
- crazy professors assaulting pro-life teenagers
- literature professors with no political background inveighing against Israel
- homosexual witch-burners wielding FOIA requests
- zombies shouting down panelists in chilling unison
- deans and provosts with no background in law enforcement judging rape cases
- commencement speakers axed to please petulant faculty subcultures.
All of that’s just your average Wednesday. We could go on and on.
The radical left-wingers view anyone outside of their group as a foreigner and as a threat, and Lopez writes that the police “keep an eye on you but will not help you when you get death threats, vandalism on your office door, or racist e-mails.”
The unhinged behavior of angry liberals is becoming a much more common occurrence, and by visiting the comments section on this website you see just how unhinged some of them really are.
Getting back to our look at Jeanette Runyon’s long-running experience of being stalked, harassed, and defamed via the Web, here’s more from her own account:
Now the homosexual stalkers have gone and posted a false report about my photography business on the revenge and extortion site ripoffreport.com. They made several pages on Pinterest about me, even including posts about my ex-husband who I left in 1980, and my deceased daughter.
These homosexual stalkers are quite obsessed about my looks (can we say shallow?) and have BlogSpot with some snapshots of me. I’m over 60 and overweight; I’ve never claimed to be a beauty — I’m just an ordinary person.
I’ve received hundreds of phone calls generated from wheresmycellphone.com and my name has been added to pro-homosexual mailing lists.
What is disturbing is how everyone agrees that my years of stalking and harassment by homosexualists is the worst they have seen — and yet no one is willing to help. Google, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr all claim it isn’t their problem. Local law enforcement officials agree that I am being cyber harassed and cyber stalked but since it is across state line by persons unknown they can’t be bothered. I’m hoping that by publishing the relentless smearing and stalking of me maybe my local sheriff’s department will be moved to investigate and to get wordpress.com Tumblr and Twitter to be more proactive on removing defamation that is clearly inciting.
Here is Runyon reflecting on the legal and criminal aspects of this type of behavior:
Harassment consists of the intentional crossing of your emotional or physical safety boundaries. You must have boundaries set in place clearly in order for that to apply. The legal definition of harassment, according to Black’s Law Dictionary, is:
“A course of conduct directed at a specific person that causes substantial emotional distress in such person and serves no legitimate purpose” or “Words, gestures, and actions which tend to annoy, alarm and abuse (verbally) another person.”
This is of course a very broad definition, which state and federal legislation and common law have narrowed and refined in various ways. However, for our purposes, WHOA defines online harassment as any actions that meet the qualifications of the above definition after the harasser has been told to cease:
If someone simply disagrees with you, however strongly or unpleasantly, that isn’t harassment. Someone who sends you a single email message that isn’t overtly threatening probably hasn’t harassed you. Spam, while very annoying, isn’t harassment. And messages posted to any open venue, such as a newsgroup, a web-based board, an AOL discussion forum or a chat room, are seldom truly harassing unless they’re forged to appear to come from you or contain direct threats or libelous statements.(note Susan has in fact posted libelous statements) The same goes for things said on someone else’s web site. Harassment usually involves repeated communications via email or some sort of instant messaging program after the harasser has clearly been told to go away (which Susan has done repeatedly).
Cyberstalking is a specific kind of harassment. The Department of Justice 1999 study on the subject defines it as “the use of the Internet, e-mail, or other electronic communications devices to stalk another person. Stalking generally involves harassing or threatening behavior that an individual engages in repeatedly, such as following a person, appearing at a person’s home or place of business, making harassing phone calls, leaving written messages or objects, or vandalizing a person’s property.” Cyberstalkers frequently follow their targets around the net, frequenting in chat rooms, message boards, newsgroups or mailing lists in which the target participates
No one is expecting the Obama Justice Department to crack down on the cyberstalking that’s being engaged in by their lefty political allies. The scandal involving the IRS targeting conservative groups clearly indicates the mindset in Obama’s White House. When we do finally get an administration that respects the rule of law — they can expect to get very busy very fast.
As for state and local law enforcement, with so much federal money at stake, there’s a big incentive to steer clear of politically incorrect action on their part. To learn more about what laws aren’t be enforced, click here.
As far as the behavior of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and others, it’s an easy guess that if the roles were reversed — that is, if conservatives or Christians were doing the bullying, those companies would be more inclined to crack down on the offenders.
So will there be justice? We opened this look at one example of evil by quoting from the book of Psalms. Let’s close with a verse from Isaiah:
The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves. (Isaiah 3:9)
It’s not just the look in their faces — it’s also their behavior — their anger and irrationality. The kind of people who have harassed Jeanette Runyon are miserable people, so in a way, they’re already reaping what they sow. As for the future, the Book of Hebrews reminds us that “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
