My 16 year old cousin is being stalked by a very obsessive 26 year old man online who keeps trying to mass-report her to get her banned. What can she do?

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨TinyLittlePuni@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨nostupidquestions@lemmy.world⁩

She called him out for making inappropriate sexual comments online to someone she knew, who was 15 at the time. He ended up getting banned. This caused this man to develop a spiteful obsession with her.

A few months ago he found her social media and his obsession is now in full force. He’s boasted about mass reporting her, making false accusations against her, and replying to irrelevant Tweets with accusations. He’s also said that he’s downloaded her photos to his computer and uploaded them to a porn site. When people confront him he uses DARVO tactics. On some sites he’s on he pretends to be civil but on his own site his motivations are much more clear. Several individuals in his friends group have allegedly either owned or defended CP.

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pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
GO TO THE FUCKING POLICE

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PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Call the cops. Harassment online is illegal, and depending on the nature of the pics that part may be very illegal. Even if he somehow doesn’t have any legal consequences from anything he’s done so far, having police reports in place for stuff now will make it easier for him to potentially face consequences later.

Talk to a lawyer if it’s complicated, a few hundred dollars may get a consultation that can set you up for how to frame things in a way that makes it more likely that the cops will do something. But even just calling the cops and laying it out (read up on the laws, stay focused on stuff that’s specifically banned by statute in a provable way as much as possible, sometimes people want to “give context” too much) may be pretty productive.

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- TinyLittlePuni@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Will do. I’m worried for her safety because like I said, it’s extremely obsessive and he’s written up about ten very long posts about her behind her back within the last 24 hours.
  
  Apparently he’s done this to other people before and those people got police involved, which caused him to boast about how he’s “in the right” because the police closed the case.
  
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  - Kirp123@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Please make a report. Even if he had a previous case that was closed it will still show up and can help establish a pattern of behaviour which can make it easier to obtain stuff like restraining orders.
    
    And make sure to talk to a lawyer, they can advise you much better than any answer you can get online. You can also ask the lawyer to make sure that any photos he may have uploaded to porn sites or watever are taken down.
    
    Stay safe and make sure to tell the kid that she did the right thing speaking out. Hope it works out for you both.
    
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  - PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, I would take it seriously. Another alternative would be getting a protective order from a judge, so that he’s not allowed to do anything like this in the future. But it sounds like he has maybe broken the law already, so maybe do both. Bottom line, fuck him up.
    
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burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
She needs to contact the police, like others have said, and she needs to get a restraining order. The police can, depending on the local laws, build a harassment and possibly a stalking case. The restraining order isn’t going to get him in ‘trouble,’ but it will let the criminal case have more evidence and weight, and gives your relative a place to start putting emphasis behind her reports.

Unfortunately, she’ll also have to give up social media. It’s a route to her, and it’s not one that will be closed down. Creeps like that dude will come back again and again, because it’s relatively easy to avoid real bans, if he even gets one. She needs to not respond to anything from him after sending one message, “I do not wish to speak with you. Do not contact me again.” Whichever route he’s going through at the time, use that one, making sure it’s one that you can keep a record of. Then, anytime any contact is attempted again, note the time, date, a brief summary of whatever was said (from him, neither she nor anyone else should respond to anything) and contact the police again. Even if the cops are lazy and often useless in online harassment, they want you off their backs, and especially the higher ups don’t want a disgruntled citizen with an actual ignored crime complaining about them, because the winds of public opinion can turn on things like that. The records of contact are what gives the cops a kick in the ass. It’s evidence that they don’t have to do anything to get, and it’s also what a judge likes to see when it comes to a harassment case. It’s also critical that she (and anyone else) never responds. Tit-for-tat may not make his acts ‘legal,’ but it makes it easy for a defense attorney to poke holes in the prosecution’s case that he was harassing her. DARVO doesn’t work if the only communication is from him. If she’s responding to him, it sets up a scenario where there is a ‘conversation’ going, and if she isn’t ending it that doesn’t sell a harassment case to a jury very well.

Keep records of what he posted, where posted it, and when his site you mentioned is updated as well. If the harassment is mostly taking place online,

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Mediocre_Bard@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
If you go to the bank and get twenty dollars in nickels all nice and rolled up, then you can put them inside of three sweat socks and have an understanding relative drive over to the stalker’s house and make a donation to his medical GoFundMe.

With the leftover change you can also get an ice cream.

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dharmacurious@slrpnk.net ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Can someone tell me what darvo tactics mean? Or tell me if I just don’t want to know. I’d Google it, but OP mentioned CP and if it’s related to that, I don’t want to Google it :(

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- edgemaster72@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  DARVO (an acronym for “Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender”) is a reaction that perpetrators of wrongdoing, such as abusers or sexual offenders, may display in response to being held accountable for their behavior. Research indicates that it is a common manipulation strategy of psychological abusers
  
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO
  
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- Rivalarrival@lemmy.today ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
  
  “I’m not stalking you. You’re to ugly for anyone to stalk. Quit stalking me!”
  
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xePBMg9@lemmynsfw.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Block and ignore. Might be tempting to engage. It’s not in your favor. Patience is your friend.

Abandon the accounts the perp has identified.

Involve the police. Start colleting a body of evidence. Don’t engage. Don’t provoke.
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FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
So, you can speak to a public defender at any time you’re interacting with the criminal legal courts…this includes as a victim- under your right to legal counsel.

I would suggest asking someone at the court house.

They can assist you with far better advice navigating the shitshow that is the courts and may be willing to help get photos taken down.

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HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Police involvement may help get him to back off, but be prepared for cops to ignore or minimize what she’s going through. Many cops are stalkers and abusers themselves. From personal experience having someone else to corroborate can help and also having extensive documentation can help get a PPI. I wish you the best of luck, its really not an easy situation and can escalate quickly.

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N0t_5ure@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The world is not well-equipped for dealing with people like this. He’s clearly a cluster B personality type, and desperate for attention. Good attention, bad attention, it doesn’t matter. This is reactive abuse, as he’s trying to provoke her to get a reaction. It may sound lame, but the best way to deal with this type of person is to completely ignore them. He is a child begging for attention. Don’t give it to him. Whatever he does should be viewed as trivial and be ignored. As he continues his concerted efforts and gets absolutely no reward for it, it will make him feel insignificant and look for his thrill elsewhere.

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msokiovt@lemmy.today ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is 100% blackmail, as she’s likely been unsafe since she basically called this guy out on his nonsense.

She needs to use these guides… she needs to become a ghost of sorts: untraceabledigitaldissident.com/articles

These need to be read every day, and she’ll need to catch up on how she can turn her privacy around. The reason why I said that she was being blackmailed was because she didn’t practice good OPSEC.

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commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
pummel him

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hodgepodgin@lemmy.zip ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Can you ID where this guy lives using OSINT? Even just the location of his house is enough if you don’t know his name. Maybe get local police interested.

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ako@piefed.social ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
she sent him or posted her naked pics somewhere and now hes is messaging her on INTERNET? OH NO

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- TinyLittlePuni@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  They weren’t naked pics. They were just normal selfies.
  
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  - Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If there’s any silver lining here, this is it.
    
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- njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s so convenient how often pedophiles tell on themself isn’t it?
  
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- XiELEd@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Where is your reading comprehension? Was it underdeveloped because of your country’s education system? Not once was it mentioned that she posted photos of her naked. And I am surprised you somehow got on the fediverse of all places because anyone who has been around on the internet knows that people would take photos of children on restaurants and post them on porn sites.
  
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My 16 year old cousin is being stalked by a very obsessive 26 year old man online who keeps trying to mass-report her to get her banned. What can she do?

Comments

GO TO THE FUCKING POLICE