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"In 2008, Alissa got a summer gig waiting tables at a local restaurant in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Fifty-nine-year-old Roger Troy had taken to sitting in her section. To Alissa, then 21, he seemed harmless enough\u2014a lonely guy, bald and paunchy, who just wanted some attention\u2014but when he asked for her number, she refused. He kept asking, though, so eventually she gave him an email address to an account she rarely used. \\\"She didn't want Troy calling but thought if he had her email he'd stop bugging her,\\\" recalls Brent Blanton, Alissa's boyfriend at the time.\\n\\nTroy would email to ask Alissa to let him know what shifts she was working, which she did. Then one day, as she was leaving work, Troy tried to hug her. Alissa's manager intervened before Troy got close enough, but the incident spooked her; she began ignoring his emails. Two weeks later, she quit to start her job at a local school. Angry, Troy took to his computer. \\\"Too bad you let John [the manager] ruin a good friendship,\\\" he wrote in an email. \\\"I really did 'love you to bits' in a fatherly way....\\\"\\n\\nAlissa mentioned to Brent that Troy was sending creepy emails but left it at that. \\\"She hated talking about him,\\\" Brent says. \\\"She didn't want me to worry about her.\\\" Alissa stopped checking the account, figuring Troy would get bored and leave her alone, and instead focused on her upcoming wedding\u2014Brent had proposed that winter and the couple was happily planning a late-summer ceremony on the beach. \\\"Right after we got married, she happened to log in to her old account,\\\" Brent says. \\\"There were hundreds of new emails from Troy. That's when I realized how serious this was. He was obsessed.\\\"\\n\\nThe couple immediately went to the police. \\\"We showed the officer the emails\u2014some of which contained details about Alissa's hair and weight, things that Troy could know only because he'd been following her,\\\" Brent says. \\\"His only advice was to file for a restraining order, but he made it seem like we wouldn't get one, since it wasn't a crime to email someone.\\\"\\n\\nBelieving there was nothing the police could do, Alissa and Brent tried to move on with their lives. In October 2009, they signed the papers on a little three-bedroom fixer-upper on a side street in Cocoa. \\\"Alissa was so excited about owning our first home and tackling some DIY projects,\\\" Brent recalls. That January, the two were doing yard work when they found an envelope in the grass addressed to Brent. It wasn't postmarked. Inside was a three-page letter from Troy detailing a series of fictional affairs involving Alissa: \\\"If you knew what I know, you would run [away] and not leave [her] a forwarding address.... You should have kicked her cheating, lying ass...to the curb. What the HELL is wrong with [you]?\\\"\\n\\nFreaked out that Troy had apparently been to their home, Alissa filed for a restraining order. A hearing followed, but the judge wasn't convinced that Troy posed an imminent threat. He scheduled another hearing for a few weeks later and declined to issue a temporary restraining order in the interim. \\\"We were really upset by the decision,\\\" Brent says. \\\"Alissa was such a happy person, but after the hearing she was anxious.\\\"\\n\\nOn February 8, 2010, Alissa and Brent drove to the AT&amp;T call center where they both worked. Her shift started at 1:15 p.m., his an hour later. Brent parked the car in their usual spot. Alissa jumped out and made her way toward the building; Brent stayed behind. Neither noticed Troy sitting in his pickup several hundred feet away.\\n\\nSuddenly, Brent heard a flurry of shots. He raced toward the building's entrance. There he saw Alissa, lying on the ground near the door, blood everywhere. She'd been shot 10 times. Troy lay nearby, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Brent did what he could to save his wife\u2014giving her CPR and pressing his fingers into her wounds to stop the bleeding until paramedics arrived\u2014but Alissa never regained consciousness.\\n\\nNearly three years later, Brent still struggles to understand how it all went so horribly wrong. \\\"If I'd known what would happen, I would've moved cross-country to get Alissa away from him,\\\" he says. \\\"I miss her terribly. At times I feel responsible because I wasn't able to protect her. But we did what the police told us to do...we thought we were doing everything right.\\\"\\n\\nAlissa's murder was widely reported. What wasn't: that she was the latest victim of a new but growing crime in which someone uses the Internet to harass, intimidate or threaten someone else. Generally, for a person to be charged with cyberstalking, the online harassment needs to be severe enough to cause the victim serious emotional distress, and there must be a threat of real and imminent physical danger. It's typically considered cyberharassment, rather than cyberstalking, if the stalker stops short of threatening violence.\\n\\nEach year, about 850,000 people are cyberstalked, according to a 2009 Justice Department study. Experts say those numbers are probably low. \\\"Cyberstalking is such a new phenomenon, most people haven't heard of it,\\\" says Matt Nobles, Ph.D., a criminologist at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Victims are usually women, the majority of them under age 35, according to the advocacy group Working to Halt Online Abuse, and their stalkers are commonly men\u2014often an ex-boyfriend or husband.\\n\\nMany victims never seek help. A man crouched behind a bush is legitimately scary; so are threatening emails or posts on your Facebook wall from a guy suggesting that he's been watching you, but women often feel silly for being afraid of something that doesn't seem like a tangible threat, Nobles says. After all, we're a culture that throws around the word *stalking* like it's no big deal\u2014\\\"I'm totally Facebook stalking your vacation pics!\\\" The popular humor site SomeECards.com has a note you can send to your friends: \\\"I live in constant fear of accidentally mentioning something I only know about you because I've stalked you on the Internet.\\\"\\n\\nYet Nobles's research indicates that a woman who is being cyberstalked is more likely than a victim of traditional stalking to change her life\u2014by quitting her job, altering her appearance, avoiding friends and family, taking self-defense classes, installing a security system, even buying a gun. \\\"When you're being harassed both online and in real life, it feels like this person can be everywhere at once and you have no idea where they'll strike next\u2014YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, outside your office\u2014which makes the world feel that much more frightening,\\\" explains Elizabeth Carll, Ph.D., a psychologist in Long Island, New York, who works with cyberstalking victims.\\n\\nWomen who do go to the police may find little reassurance. It takes only a modicum of tech savvy to stalk someone online\u2014e.g., soliciting a victim's address from acquaintances by posing as a long-lost friend on Craigslist. Yet law enforcement has been unable to keep up, says Christopher Mallios, an attorney with the Washington, D.C.\u2013based AEquitas, a group that assists law enforcement in responding to violence against women. Maintaining a computer forensic unit costs money, and the funds just aren't there. Plus, there's a perception problem: \\\"It seems crazy, but traditional stalking laws have been on the books for only the past 20 years; before that, stalking was treated as a 'summary harassment offense,' which is the legal equivalent of a traffic ticket,\\\" Mallios explains. \\\"It's still a struggle in many places to get law enforcement to take stalking seriously; cyberstalking, even more so.\\\"\\n\\nMisinformation about victims' legal rights is rampant. \\\"Often what victims are told is that it's not really a crime, or we can't do anything until he actually hurts you,\\\" says Jessamyn Tracy, a program associate with the Stalking Resource Center, part of the National Center for Victims of Crime. \\\"It's not true.\\\" A majority of states have cyberstalking laws, but in those that don't, traditional stalking laws can be used to prosecute online stalkers.\\n\\n\\\"It's unfortunate, but sometimes it's up to you to educate the police officer,\\\" says Jim Bueermann, president of the Washington, D.C.\u2013based Police Foundation. The advice police often give victims: Stay offline, which is like telling someone not to go outside. It's unfair and it serves to isolate victims further. \\\"Why should you have to change your life because this jerk's traumatizing you?\\\" Bueermann says. \\\"This is one of the areas in which police need the most training.\\\"\\n\\nAnna Mayer (her name has been changed to protect her privacy) knows firsthand about police offering impractical advice. Four years ago, Anna was a regular reader of a classmate's blog about sex on their college campus. The blog was already controversial, but a post about rape fantasies stirred up vehement reactions, mostly negative, toward the blog's writer. Anna came to her classmate's defense: \\\"I posted an anonymous comment on the blog saying that there is nothing wrong or unusual in having fantasies,\\\" she says. \\\"It was totally benign stuff.\\\"\\n\\nA month later, Anna's father called her. He had a Google alert set to notify him when new stories with his last name appeared online, and he'd just received one. \\\"When he clicked on the link it went to a blog titled 'Anna's rape fantasies,'\\\" Anna says. It seemed that an anonymous group of people, upset with the sex blog's content and Anna's comments, had uncovered her identity and lashed out. \\\"I was shocked, humiliated and hurt,\\\" Anna says.\\n\\nThe attacks didn't stop there. More posts appeared: \\\"They accused me of being fired for sexual misconduct,\\\" Anna recalls. \\\"They called me a fat, ugly bitch. These people know how to pick at things you're already insecure about.\\\" She filed a police report. But even though new postings continued to show up, the police forensic team was unable to trace them back to the culprits. Without someone to prosecute, the police had no case and eventually gave up. They advised Anna to stay offline, which for a college student was pretty much impossible. \\\"I was going to need to get a job. How was I supposed to find one without using the Web or email?\\\" says Anna. \\\"And who was going to hire me if, when you Google my name, these posts pop up?\\\"\\n\\nIt's a valid concern, says cyberlaw expert Danielle Citron, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School in Baltimore: \\\"Even if victims stay offline, employers don't. Neither, for that matter, do landlords or banks.\\\" More than 90 percent of employers do an Internet search on prospective employees before hiring, finds a survey conducted by Reppler, a social-media monitoring firm. \\\"So many of the tools that we use to cultivate friendships, network and get a leg up in our careers\u2014Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare\u2014can put us at risk if there's someone who wants to hurt us,\\\" Citron says.\\n\\nKristen Pratt didn't give it much thought when she accepted a Facebook friend request in 2008 from Patrick Macchione, a guy she'd briefly met a few years earlier while she was taking a community college class as a high school senior. \\\"I barely remembered him, but you're friends with everybody on Facebook, especially at that age,\\\" says Kristen, now 24.\\n\\nWithin days, Macchione was flooding her Facebook inbox with messages. It was mostly indecipherable stuff, often starting with: \\\"I'm a reptile.\\\" Then came the YouTube videos: \\\"In one he stares at the camera, points his fingers at me as if holding a gun and pretends to shoot,\\\" Kristen recalls. Eventually, he was on Twitter, too: \\\"you MADE ME into a monster\\\"; \\\"In SICKNESS and in health until the day you die...!\\\"\\n\\n\\\"I didn't tell anyone about Patrick at first because I thought I could handle it,\\\" she says. \\\"The messages were often sexual, and I felt embarrassed. Plus, I kept thinking he'd leave me alone.\\\" Kristen tried hard to focus on other things, but the harassment continued, and soon she couldn't think about anything else. \\\"I would have nightmares about Patrick and wake up in a cold sweat, screaming,\\\" she says. \\\"I was always looking over my shoulder.\\\"\\n\\nA few months later, Macchione somehow found Kristen's cell number; in one three-hour period, she says, he called her about 40 times. Kristen phoned the police. \\\"They asked me if he knew where I lived. When I said I didn't think so, it seemed like there was nothing they could do,\\\" Kristen recalls. Frustrated, she decided to download Macchione's videos and print out his messages and Tweets. Just in case.\\n\\nOne night in the summer of 2009, Kristen was walking from the parking lot to the Outback Steakhouse where she worked, when Patrick jumped out of the bushes. (How he learned she worked there was never clear.) \\\"I screamed and ran inside,\\\" Kristen says. \\\"The next morning I filed for a restraining order.\\\" It was granted, but Macchione didn't stay away. \\\"He came to Outback and left notes on my car\u2014he wrote, 'My eyes are on you.'\\\"\\n\\nEarly one morning that fall, Sgt. Mark Conway was patrolling an apartment complex near the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where Kristen was a student. Conway was about to end his shift when Macchione, dressed all in black and wearing a backpack, cruised in on a bike. Suspicious, Conway pulled him over. In the backpack was pornography, a sex toy and a video camera. He arrested Macchione for loitering. When Conway got back to the station, he watched the recordings on the camera. In one, Macchione talked about Kristen facing tragedy.\\n\\nConway immediately called her. \\\"From the videos, it was clear that this guy was obsessed with her, and I was worried that he might try to hurt her,\\\" he says. Kristen told Conway about the restraining order and sent him the YouTube videos. Conway then called Michelle Latham, deputy bureau chief at the state attorney's office. Looking over the evidence, Latham felt there was enough to prosecute Macchione for stalking.\\n\\nMacchione pleaded no contest to violating the restraining order, written threats to kill or do bodily harm and aggravated stalking. He faced up to 41 years behind bars. In her statement at the sentencing hearing, Latham told the judge: \\\"The number of years you give this defendant\u2014that's the number of years you're telling Kristen she can live.\\\" The judge sentenced Macchione to 4 years' imprisonment followed by 15 years' probation. \\\"Four years? Four years is nothing,\\\" Kristen says. With credit for time served, Macchione has only eight months left.\\n\\n+++inset-image-right\\n\\n[#image: /photos/57d8ae8550778cef321a53bb]||||||\\n\\n+++\\n\\n__Alissa and Brent  \\non their wedding  \\nday, 2009.__\\n\\nGetting the courts to understand cybercrimes has been a struggle. \\\"We live in a digital world, and judges\u2014who tend to be toward the end of their careers and therefore older\u2014are often from an analog era,\\\" Citron says.\\n\\nIn a noteworthy decision issued in 2011, a judge ruled in favor of a man who allegedly stalked Alyce Zeoli, a Buddhist leader in Maryland, on Twitter. In issuing his decision, the judge wrote that Tweets are like bits of free speech on a public bulletin board: If you don't like what's posted, you can look away.\\n\\n\\\"In my view, the judge didn't really understand the technology involved or how common the Internet is in everyone's lives,\\\" says Shanlon Wu, one of the lawyers who represented Zeoli. Wu worries that the decision could affect how often cyberstalking victims are willing to come forward. \\\"His ruling made it seem like cyberstalking is no big deal. That victims should 'ignore' their stalker by shutting down their computers.\\\"\\n\\nChange tends to happen after high-profile cases. After Alissa's widely publicized death, her family teamed up with state Senator David Simmons to petition the Florida legislature to pass a bill that would make it easier to prosecute cyberstalkers. In October, the law went into effect, making the state one of 34 in the nation to have cyberstalking-specific legislation in place. \\\"It doesn't bring Alissa back,\\\" says Mark Goedecke, Alissa's father. \\\"But it's a bit of peace of mind that these laws may help someone else's daughter.\\\"\\n\\nFor Anna, though, there has been no justice. Four years have passed, yet someone continues to blog about her. She has a disclaimer on her r\u00E9sum\u00E9, forewarning employers what they will find if they search for her online, and she has offered to send police reports to verify her claims that the posts are false. Hopefully, as public awareness of the crime grows and people begin to realize how serious and damaging cyberstalking is, Anna won't have to do so much explaining.\\n\\nKristen has similar hopes. After Macchione's sentencing, she and a friend headed to a bar for a drink. The manager saw Kristen playing with her friend's cell and came over. He asked if they'd heard about that \\\"whiny baby girl\\\" who had put a guy in prison for sending a few text messages.\\n\\nKristen stopped what she was doing and looked up from the phone: \\\"I'm that whiny baby girl.\\\"  \\n  \\nPhoto Credit: Courtesy of Brent Blanton"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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