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- SYDNEY (AFP) - The average
stalker is a timid, unloved soul often rejected by past lovers and desperate
for initimacy rather than sex, according to new Australian research released
on Tuesday.
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- The study, by Melbourne-based Victorian Institute of
Mental Health, found that stalkers have acute social problems, most have
some form of mental illness and often inflict severe damage on their victims.
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- Their targets are stalked for an average of a year, often
for three or four and in one case for 20 years. One victim was contacted
200 times in a single day.
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- Most stalkers used the telephone, letters or e-mail to
make contact but one stalker went as far as to hire a helicopter to track
his prey and another obtained a licence to operate as a private detective.
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- The study, claimed to be the most comprehensive yet of
an increasingly high profile social problem, examined 145 of the 284 people
convicted of stalking in the south-eastern state of Victoria in the four
years to 1997.
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- Tennis star Monica Seles, Hollywood actress Jodie Foster
and Australian supermodel Elle MacPherson are among those who have all
fallen victim to stalking.
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- The co-author of the study, professor Paul Mullen of
Melbourne's Monash University, found the stalkers were usually but not
always males who have problems dealing with other people at almost every
level.
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- Some are sexual predators, but they are very much in
the minority, said the study which defines a stalker as someone who made
at least 10 unwelcome attempts to approach or contact a victim for at least
a month.
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- They can be categorised in five groups: the rejected,
the intimacy-seekers, the incompetent, the resentful and the predators,
men with a history of sex crime who seek pleasure in planning sexual attacks.
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- But Mullen believes the sexual element of stalking is
much less common and that many stalkers are horrified by sex.
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- "They are just trying to get close to somebody but
don't realise they are being totally unproductive," he told The Australia.
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- More typically, they have been rejected by former lovers,
they seek intimacy with a person unwilling to reciprocate and they stalk
them an average of three or four years.
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- They are aged in their late 30s, more than 50 percent
had had prior criminal conviction and a majority threaten or assault their
victims.
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- The incompetent were socially and intellectually inferior
to the others and had little grasp of courting skills.
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- The study said the resentful had a vendetta against someone,
citing the example of a doctor who was stalked by a man who blamed him
for mis-diagnosing his wife's cancer.
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- Mullen believed the fact that most suffered some form
of mental illness suggested anti-stalking legislation should be changed
to require all of those convicted of stalking to undergo mental health
examination.
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