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Stalking Of America And The Us Court System

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Stalking in America and The US Court Systems
Angela J. Townsend
Ashford University
February 4, 2017

STALKING IN AMERICA AND THE US COURT SYSTEM

Stalking is a national epidemic. Across the country millions of Americans are stalked each year. They are followed without relief everywhere they go–to work, to school, to the shopping mall, to the doctor’s office, to their home—until they no longer feel safe anywhere.
The first stalking laws were defined by the state of Claifornia. Now all fifty states have their own state penal code defining stalking. The California Penal code 646.9. stalking. 2008 defines stalking as “any person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or willfully and maliciously harasses …show more content…

The bottom line is that cases vary and that it is impossible to predict exactly which stalkers will be violent and when. (U.S. Department of Justice, 2008.)
According to stalking in America: Findings from the National Violence Against women survey published by the united States Department of Justice’s National institute of Justice in 1998-“About half of all stalking victims over the course of a 12 month period were estimated 14 in every 1,000 personals age 18 and older were victims of stalking. Women were at a greater risk than men. Males were 37% and female 41% victims of stalking.”
One infamous Detroit case of stalking and serial rape and murder was offender, Benjamin (Tony) Atkins, also known as the Woodward Corridor killer. Atkins was an American serial killer from Detroit, Michigan. He stalked and then murdered dozens of women in Detroit and surrounding areas during a period of nine months in the early 1990’s.
All the Atkin’s victims were found in abandoned, ramshackle buildings, all had been stabbed, and raped. They were alive for several hours before Atkins would strangle them. Most of them had been murdered in and around parks in Detroit. Some of the victims were prostitutes and other street people. These kind of “street people” victims made stalking much easier for Atkins, as he had easy access to hide and to follow them around the city.
During his trial, Atkins admitted that he had been a victim of child

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