Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Stalking by blog

I wouldn't have thought it possible, but apparently it is...

Mail.
A hospital administrator has made British legal history by becoming the first man to be jailed for stalking a woman by blog.
Stephen Andreassen, 38, compiled up to 35 website blogs in which he repeatedly insulted an ex-girlfriend after she ended their month-long relationship, Manchester Magistrates' Court heard.
Over 18 months Andreassen regularly updated his sites telling men to stay away from mature university student Rebecca Pattinson, 36, while bombarding her with Facebook messages, texts, phone calls and e-mails begging for her to take him back.
Ok, the guys obviously obsessed, but stalking by blog? I don't see how it can be done, it's not like the lady in question or other people were forced to read this guys blog and he's certainly no Guido with hundreds of thousands of readers. There are also a good few swearblogs around who do pick targets and go around being very insulting too, but you don't hear of them being closed down by the police either. I suspect this is probably just additional material to justify (rightly) imprisoning the guy for his campaign against Miss Pattinson.
Normally I'd just ignore Daily Mail sensationalism, but it does seem as if the judge and the police used his attempts at blogging as part of the evidence against him, though my own thoughts on the matter having blogged for about 2 years in this incarnation are that he would have struggled to get any hits on any of his 35 blogs. New blogs in particular don't normally tend to be high profile unless the blogger is high profile and blogging from a high profile site as witness Norman Tebbit. The way it's normally done for us lesser mortals is to go around commenting on others sites and gradually attract notice that way, assuming you want to be noticed of course, but it is satisfying in a way to get the odd comment, even if they don't agree with what you have to say. I blog because it helps release the occasional anger and frustration I feel at the direction this country is going in and it alleviates my frustration at not really being in a position to do anything about it (for which you should probably be thankful) Mostly like today I pass comment on something I read, sometimes about something I do and I don't really attract a lot of notice, even after 2 years, yes it's grown steadily, but I'd be deluding myself if its because of my talent, more I suspect my persistence in outlasting a good few better (in my opinion) bloggers than myself..
So, Andreassen was convicted of stalking, though mostly it was harassment by facebook and text which seem to be the usual medium of the stalker today, but he did use blogs as well to advertise his mental state, I suspect though he'll be unique, not as a stalker, but as someone who used blogs to stalk.
Unless you know different?

3 annotations:

James Higham said...

A hospital administrator has made British legal history by becoming the first man to be jailed for stalking a woman by blog.

Now that's very interesting, given my stalker. Hmmmm.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

QM, its is just more control, more state intervention in what is nothing more than private spat!

JuliaM said...

"There are also a good few swearblogs around who do pick targets and go around being very insulting too, but you don't hear of them being closed down by the police either. "

Yet.