Early Signs of Stalking

The Early Signs

The first step in studying a phenomenon such as stalking is to conÐ'¬duct descriptive and correlational studies that provide information on how and why stalking occurs. Another important area of study is the analysis of antecedents, or early signs of stalking, that might be used to preÐ'¬dict the behavior in specific situations or in certain individuals. In this conÐ'¬text, early signs of stalking constitute either of the following: (a) problem behaviors in the social relationships of children or adolescents that could be viewed as early manifestations of obsessional following in a specific instance, or (b) childhood risk factors that suggest someone might stalk another person later in life. One reason for exploring the potential early signs of stalking in young people is that it broadens the application of mateÐ'¬rial presented thus far by raising awareness of those risk factors that can be targeted for treatment. In this way, preventive programs can be implementÐ'¬ed early on so that the risk of stalking might be reduced. A final reason for examining potential risk factors for stalking is that some problem behaviors in childhood that overlap with stalking, such as bullying and sexual harassÐ'¬ment, have been more extensively studied and can provide direction for the design of preventive programs for stalking and obsessional following.

STALKING IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

Before discussing these early risk factors, I offer a note of caution on the practical use of the material presented in this chapter. When informaÐ'¬tion is offered for one purpose, such as providing clinical and empirical hypotheses or outlining specific issues that can be addressed in treatment, there is a risk that such factors may be applied for less legitimate purposÐ'¬es, such as identifying specific individuals for restrictive detention or conÐ'¬firming some preconceived notion about a person's guilt or innocence in a criminal case. The present chapter is offered as an overview of clinical observations, anecdotal evidence, and research findings on topics related to stalking that outline hypotheses for understanding how stalking may develop and what preventive strategies might be effective.

The potential for misuse of the material presented herein arises if broad generalizations are drawn about a particular child or adolescent without confirming or disconfirming these hypotheses through the colÐ'¬lection of other data in a comprehensive psychological assessment. It is important to note that the process of clinical judgment and prediction may produce errors if clinicians fail to recognize sources of bias in judgÐ'¬ment or misapply heuristics, or simple rules for making clinical decisions. Garb (1998) provided a detailed discussion of biases that can occur in clinical judgment. Confirmatory bias occurs when clinicians look only for data that confirms their hypotheses but overlook the evidence that refutes their hypotheses. In the present context, the clinician must avoid focusing only on those specific behavioral signs observed in a particular youth that suggest a proclivity to become an obsessional follower without also conÐ'¬sidering evidence to the contrary. Hindsight bias is an error in judgment that suggests once a given event has occurred, the clinician believes that the event could have been predicted. This bias is often framed in the adage "hindsight is 20/20." Hindsight bias is more relevant to the issue of behavÐ'¬ioral prediction of violence and is addressed in the next chapter.

Misestimation of covariance is an error in clinical judgment that occurs when clinicians fail to properly describe the relationship between two variables; that is, the clinician may recall times when one variable was present and another variable was also observed but does not recall times

THE EARLY SIGNS

when the two variables were unrelated. In the present context, misestima-tion of covariance is an important issue to recognize. For example, if a particular risk factor for stalking is identified, such as a history of childÐ'¬hood bullying, this observation is based on anecdotal case evidence and an analysis of the conceptual similarities between stalking and bullying. However, there may well be numerous instances in which the presence of bullying in childhood does not lead to stalking in adulthood or, in the reverse, that a person who stalks was not necessarily a childhood bully.

It is also important to recognize that judgments about behavior can sometimes be characterized by specific heuristics, or simple rules, that outline how judgments are made (Garb, 1998). For example, the past-behavior heuristic involves clinicians making predictions of future behavÐ'¬ior based on the person's past behavior. This approach is not necessarily inaccurate; the past-behavior heuristic is merely a means of describing the decision-making process. With respect to the material presented in this chapter, this heuristic is relevant because some anecdotal evidence sugÐ'¬gests that a history of harassing behavior such as obsessive relational intrusions, obsessive preoccupation, and stalking early in one's life are risk factors for stalking in adulthood. Empirical research on the childhood hisÐ'¬tories of adult stalking offenders, as well as longitudinal study of children who manifest harassing and bullying behavior, is needed to evaluate the validity of this anecdotal evidence.

In light of these difficulties in making judgments about risk factors for stalking, two general themes are explored in this chapter. One topic to be addressed is the relevance of a common and familiar form of repetitive harassment among children that overlaps considerably with stalking, namely bullying. In fact, formal legal recognition of bullying as a type of stalking behavior is found in cases where anti-stalking legislation has been used to legally address chronic bullying among children and teenagers. These interesting cases raise the notion that some forms of bullying may constitute a subtype of stalking in youngsters, whereas in other cases bulÐ'¬lying may represent a coercive behavior that is a childhood precursor of a life pattern of controlling and harassing behavior that extends into adult-

STALKING IN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS

hood. Because early prevention programs have been designed to address bullying, extension and modification of these programs to address obsesÐ'¬sional following may also be useful in efforts to prevent stalking.

A second general