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| Living in fear... |
July 22, 2003 |
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Wilson Joins Brokovich, Lifetime TV, in Raising Stalking Awareness
By Kim Atura
Kim just graduated from Albuquerque Academy, where she served as editor of her school`s newspaper. She is serving a Summer internship in Congresswoman Wilson`s Albuquerque office and starts college this fall.
Every year, more than one million women and over 370,000 men are terrorized by stalkers. Loopholes in the justice system and poor communication between jurisdictions often allow the stalking to continue despite the best efforts of victims to make it stop.
Now, Congresswoman Heather Wilson and consumer-advocate Erin Brockovich, along with Lifetime Television, have joined together to ratchet up awareness about stalking, both on Capitol Hill and nationally.
Members of Klinke`s family and Wilson will appear on "Final Justice With Erin Brokovich" on the Lifetime network show`s season finale. Lifetime is uncertain when exactly the show will air, but it`s expected to appear on the network in late August or early September. Most of the show was taped in a series of briefings, meetings, interviews, and a floor-speech delivered by Wilson.
In an effort to increase awareness of stalking Wilson has sponsored a bill to make January 2004 National Stalking Awareness Month. That month will mark the one-year anniversary of the day one of Wilson’s constituents was killed by her stalker ex-boyfriend.
Tragic Inspiration Margaret “Peggy” Klinke lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while attending college. Over the course of nearly three years, Klinke was stalked and eventually murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Klinke was one of the 54 percent of suspected stalking victims to report the crime and take legal action, but a move to California and a weak restraining order allowed her stalker to find her and kill her.
Stalking “is a crime that is absolutely misunderstood, and in the end is deadly,” said Brockovich. Indeed, 76 percent of women who are killed by an intimate partner were stalked by that partner prior to their deaths.
Living in Fear“The thing that gets me about these cases is how much it affects people’s lives – to live being afraid of who’s outside your house. And it’s not just a moment of time. It’s all the time. Just waiting for the next time for something to happen or wondering if they’re in the neighborhood now,” Wilson said.
 Wilson met with Brokovich, Klinke`s family, and members of the U.S. Justice Department on July 8."
For the one in twelve women who will be stalked in their lifetime (and the one in 45 men) that anxiety can be augmented by a lack of legal options. Klinke filed a criminal complaint and won a restraining order against her stalker, but there was nothing she could do when he set fire to her boyfriend’s house and followed her to California. Communication breakdowns between jurisdictions often allow restraining orders to lose their force as they are forgotten or ignored, and victims sometimes decline to file new orders when they move.
“The police that came to Peggy and Mark’s house were always sympathetic, yet without the proper tools it becomes difficult to help people in their situation,” Wilson said. Wilson hopes that by first raising awareness she will later be able to enact more powerful legislation to protect victims of stalkers and prevent future repeats of the tragedy that befell Peggy Klinke.
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