Mom and Dad – sorry for the ugly word in the title, but I am emotional blogger.  I always have a jillion things running around in my head, but these days, the only time I feel compelled to sit at the keyboard and bang it out is when I am angry.   And I am beyond angry right now.   I am teetering in that zone between mom and vigilante, and it is a scary feeling.     I am embroiled in a scary, maddening stalking case involving five young girls, one of whom is my daughter.   She is the “least” impacted if there is such a thing, but nonetheless we are involved.

So that I don’t ramble, I am going to use bullet points to share the horror.   That may not be standard blog practice, but it makes sense to me.

• The stalker, over a period of 20 months, has slashed 23 tires and carved names/warnings on 7 different vehicles.   Some vehicles were carved on more than once.
• The stalker has followed his main target, an ex girlfriend, from home, school, parties, work, you name it and sends her messages letting her know he knows what she is doing.
• The stalker has sent, if I had to guess based on the ones I have seen, more than 50 messages that contain threats for health and safety to the victims via text, facebook, twitter, etc. and he has left threatening notes on many of the cars he has vandalized.
• There is more crap in the timeline of horror and I can’t even think of it all right now.  Its a lot.   Bottom line is he is after his ex and he is including four of her friends in the horror by destroying their cars and sending them threatening messages as well.
• The stalker has been out on bond, awaiting a hearing for one of the various things he has done, and he violated the conditions of his bond and should have gone to jail.  Instead…
• He recently plead guilty to a Stalking 1 felony to end the whole entire case to take his chances with a Judge that he would not get real jail time.   That plea did NOT include any of the vandalism or message sending.   It was based on the fact that he broke a judge’s order not to have any contact with his victim.
• He received 3 years probation under the Youthful Offenders Act – which means if he keeps his nose clean this charge will disappear in 8 years.   Fat chance.
• He was told if he contacts her again he is going to jail.
• On May 5th, about 3 weeks after his Felony Plea, he messaged her again – “Yall will be hearing from us soon.  We have a few surprises for ya’ll.  Hmmm be ready.”
• He contacted her again, defying a judge’s order, because he has gotten away with so much he does not think anything will happen.    He is mocking the law.

So here is why I am angry blogging.

LAW ENFORCEMENT has done all it can do.   It has investigated and built an incredibly strong case against this young man.   The evidence is impressive.  I am grateful for the men and women at the Florence County Sheriff’s Office who took over this case from the City Of Florence Police Department.   The FCSO has worked tirelessly, putting in waaaayyyyy more hours than this case should have taken, to prove that the stalker is dangerous and needs to be either institutionalized or jailed.    All of us who have been impacted by this stalker extend our deepest appreciation to the investigators who have worked to make this case.    Law Enforcement has done its job – above and beyond.   I write this here as a huge SHOUT OUT and don’t want any misunderstandings about this blog.   This blog is not an indictment on LAW ENFORCEMENT.   Thank you  – you know who you are.

The blog is an indictment of the LAW.     The laws in the case are protecting an individual who gets to send a message to a young girl to tell her to “watch your back we are coming for you” without any worry that he is going to be arrested.  Do you know why?  Because he has been getting away with it for almost two years.   The law basically needs blood or bodies to lock someone up. He can show her a picture of a gun he says he just bought, but that is ok, even if you are a stalker.   You know what else?  He is protected because he used Facebook and came up with a fake account to use to harrass her and her friends.   Oh, he did it from his own phone and computer, but to get Facebook to cooperate with Law Enforcement takes months and sometimes they won’t cooperate.   To connect his phones and computers to Twitter accounts and FB and email requires unbelieveable acts and it should not be that way.  It makes no sense.  The laws in the case also have some vague requirement about video quality because actual footage of the stalker slashing his ex’s tires  while wearing very specific clothes everyone can identify WITH A CAST ON HIS BROKEN ARM was not quite good enough.   We can SEE him committing a crime.  But prosecutors “don’t like” the quality.   The law in this case let a 3rd different judge, who was hearing for the 3rd time how he had broken a restraining order, tell him to behave himself and stay away from her and send him home.    He has NEVER followed a judge’s order.  In fact, let me tell you how much the LAW has failed us here.   As a juvenile, he stalked a girlfriend, committed acts of violence against her and HER PET, but because he was a juvenile we can’t talk about that in court today.   This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how the laws are not working for stalking victims in our case.

Finally, let me vent to you about the LAW and POLITICS.   The Solicitor of Florence County decided that he did not want to present all the compelling vandalism evidence against this stalker to a judge.   I am still not sure why,  but as of right now, the Solicitor has no intention of charging him with the 23 tires and 7 carved up cars.  He just wanted it neat and tidy with a quick Stalking 1 conviction and that was good enough for him.  He wants us to be thrilled that he got a Felony conviction because he will go right to jail if he does anything else.     Well guess what!   He did something else.  Yesterday.  He messaged her and her friends a threat.   But he used a throwaway phone.  And according to the law, Law Enforcement is going to have to find the phone, tie it to him, blah blah blah.  Its like starting over, and the stalker is getting craftier and craftier.  He probably threw the phone away.    We all know who it is.  YOU, my reader, know who it is.   He is pissing in the face of Law Enforcement and these girls by contacting her.   But the law and our Solicitor are just going about their business.

Here is what has GOT to change: STALKING is not a joke.   The laws regarding STALKING have got to be rewritten to take care of this.   Stalking acts committed by a juvenile should NOT be expunged and should be admissible in future cases.   This mess about social media as a place to hide has got to be worked out.  People, a 22 year old male with a knife was crawling around my yard in the dark and slashed two tires, wrote names all down the side of my daughter’s car and left a threatening message on her windshield.   The Solicitor of Florence County does not get to decide that this is not important.   He does not get to turn his head, in the name of the law, and watch a dangerous person walk out of a courtroom free to continue to terrorize girls.   Ask anyone in law enforcment: people like this only get bolder and do worse things.  They escalate.  This stalker is biding his time.   He is emboldened.

I have said this to everyone who has talked to me about this case:  I refuse to be the mother under a funeral tent who says “We knew this was going to happen.”   I am not going to let this happen.  This has got to stop.   If the Solicitor’s Office won’t return my call or do something about this, then I will have to get help elsewhere.   Once I cool off, I will make my next phone call.   Thanks for reading.  But I don’t even feel better now.   That does not bode well for Mr. Stalker.