WHOA Releases Statistics on Cyberstalking
February 3, 2002
WHOA (Working to Halt Online Abuse), an online organization dedicated to helping victims of online harassment and cyberstalking, announced statistics that may help people understand this growing problem.
"Cyberstalking cases are still fairly new," said WHOA President Jayne Hitchcock. "As far as I know, we are the only organization that keeps this type of demographic information."
According to Hitchcock, WHOA receives an average of 100 requests for help each week. The statistics were taken from questionnaires that victims fill out when they feel they have been harassed or stalked online. The statistics for 2001 are based on 256 cases, then compared to 353 cases from 2000 for a total of 609 cases (see the full list of statistics at http://www.haltabuse.org/resources/stats/). In 2000, 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.
Hitchcock said the majority of offenders are normally not computer experts, and usually 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.
"Over 80% of the cases in both years were resolved by WHOA by either reporting the harasser to his or her Internet Service Provider (ISP), getting the victim to change ISPs and/or their e-mail address/username or similar means," she said. "We referred 17% of cases in 2001 to either local police, FBI or attorneys."
The majority of victims that contact WHOA are Caucasian females between the ages of 18 and 30. WHOA refers victims under the age of 18 to other organizations. It is interesting to note that while 58.2% of cases in 2001 involved harassment by a male, over 32% of the harassers were female, an increase of 3% over the previous year. California, Texas and New York had the most cases of harassment in 2001, while in 2000 the top three states were California, Pennsylvania and Florida."
"E-mail remains the main source of online harassment and stalking cases," Hitchcock notes. "More than 40 percent of our cases began that way in 2001. What was surprising was that although chat was the second source of harassment/stalking in 2000, message boards and forums were second in 2001, with chat coming in third."
For more information about these statistics or WHOA, contact Hitchcock at whoa@haltabuse.org or by voicemail/fax at 561-828-2801 or email Director of Public Relations Kristie Thompson at whoapr@haltabuse.org.
