WHOA Announces Cyberstalking Statistics
January 11, 2001
WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse), an online organization dedicated to helping victims of online harassment and cyberstalking, announced statistics that may help put a face on this growing problem.
"No online safety organization that I know of has released their statistics before," said WHOA President Jayne Hitchcock. "It is a crime where numbers are increasing daily, and the results can devastate the victim." According to Hitchcock, WHOA receives an average of 100 requests for help each week. Of these, 95 percent are legitimate cases of online harassment or stalking, the other 5 percent are usually cases of spam or simple disagreements. The statistics were taken from questionnaires victims fill out when they feel they have been harassed or stalked online. In the last year, additional information was added to the questionnaire to help keep track of who was coming to WHOA for help, including age, gender, race and state where the victim lives.
"Of the 95 percent, we can usually help the victims resolve their cases about 81.5 percent of the time by simply contacting the offender's Internet Service Provider (ISP) on their behalf or showing them how to do it on their own," said Hitchcock.
Of the cases that are quickly resolved, less than 4 percent have recurrences. Hitchcock said that the majority of offenders are normally not computer experts, and will stop when they have been caught. However,
the ones who are not stopped right away tend to escalate to other forms of online harassment, and sometimes offline harassment and stalking.
"We advised the remaining 18.5 percent of unresolved cases to either go to the local police, FBI or state attorney. We also advised 2 percent to contact a lawyer, the National Center for Victims of Crimes or
other organizations," Hitchcock said.
The majority of victims that contact WHOA are Caucasian females between the ages of 18 and 25.
"We've been seeing more cases involving abuse on instant messenger systems and message boards on web sites, but email remains the main cause of online harassment and stalking cases," Hitchcock said. "We encourage anyone to follow the advice on our site at http://www.haltabuse.org/help/index.shtml and take advantage of our tips at http://www.haltabuse.org/help/resources.shtml so that they can try to avoid becoming victims of online harassment/stalking. But if they do, they know where they can come for help."
WHOA was founded in 1997 by Lynda Hinkle to educate the Internet community about online harassment, empower victims of harassment, and formulate voluntary policies that systems can adopt in order to create harassment-free environments online for everyone. WHOA fully supports the right to free speech online and off, but asserts that free speech is not protected when it involves threats to the emotional or physical safety of anyone.
For more information about these statistics or WHOA, contact Hitchcock via email or voicemail/fax at 561-828-2801 or email Director of Public Relations Kristie Thompson.
