A conducted by Australian researchers and published in the American Journal of Psychiatry suggests that law enforcement and agencies dedicated to helping crime victims do not take seriously people who claim to be stalked by women.
Researchers Rosemary Purcell, Michele Pathe and Paul Mullen studied 190 stalkers — 150 men and 40 women — who had been referred to mental health facilities from 1993-2000. They found that female stalkers were rarely prosecuted for stalking. The three researchers, each who run centers that deal with stalking and threat management, reported that victims of female stalkers frequently reported difficulties getting law enforcement and other agencies to take them seriously.
“I think when someone is involved in stalking, it should be treated seriously according to the behavior shown, not the gender of the perpetrator,” Purcell told Australian newspaper The Age.
The study did find important differences between women and men stalkers. Female stalkers were far less likely to assault their victims than men, which is consistent with other findings about aggressive behavior in men vs. women, but they did threaten their victims and commit acts of property damage as their male counterparts.
Ninety-one percent of the male stalkers targeted women, whereas female stalkers were as likely to harass other women as they were men.
Source:
Victims of female stalkers ‘not taken seriously’. Peter Gregory, The Age, December 1, 2001.