Marywood University has launched a community Stalking Awareness Campaign to mark the seventeenth National Stalking Awareness Month, an annual call to action to recognize and respond to the serious crime of stalking. Marywood University’s Counseling and Student Development Center posts daily to its Instagram and Facebook platforms, and will offer a Zoom event on January 28, 2021, from 7-9 p.m. For additional information about this event, please email Brandice Ricciardi, associate director of the Counseling and Student Development Center, at [email protected].

It is critical to raise the issue of stalking as its own form of gender-based violence, as well as a crime that frequently predicts and co-occurs with physical and sexual assault. Stalking impacts 1 in 6 women and 1 in 17 men in the United States yet, despite the prevalence and impacts, many victims and criminal justice professionals underestimate its danger and urgency. Stalking is defined as a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that causes fear. Many stalking victims experience being followed, approached, monitored and or threatened—including through various forms of technology. Victims and survivors often suffer anxiety, social dysfunction, and severe depression as a result of their victimization, and many lose time from work and often move as a result. Stalking is a terrifying and psychologically harmful crime in its own right, as well as a predictor of potentially lethal violence. In 85 percent of cases where an intimate partner (boyfriend or husband) attempted to murder his female partner, stalking preceded the attack.

Stalking is a crime in all 50 states, the U.S. Territories and the District of Columbia, but can be difficult to recognize and prosecute in a system designed to respond to singular incidents rather than the series of acts that constitutes stalking.

National Stalking Awareness Month’s theme is, “Stalking: Know It. Name It. Stop It,” a call to action for everyone in the Marywood University community and across the country. While police and victim-serving professionals are critical, the reality is the vast majority of victims tell friends or family about the stalking first. Month-long programming has been taking place to promote awareness and public education about stalking during the annual observance. For additional information, please contact Brandice Riccciardi, at [email protected], or contact the Counseling and Student Development Center at Marywood University, at marywood.edu/csdc/index.html, or (570) 348-6245.