Protection from Stalking & Harassment A Guide to minimising the risk to children Home button More Information button The Internet button Useful Contacts button Image of Children Gathering Evidence Write down information as soon as possible Where a child is being troubled by someone, it is important to gather evidence, as this will help the police by keeping a record of events. Where/when they were followed, phoned, got post or e-mail. If possible, download data onto a disk and print out a hard copy of e-mail messages, but do not delete the original-keep it for the police to examine. The more details you have, the better. For example, how the offender looked or sounded, what they were wearing, the make, number plate or colour of their car. Making notes in a diary is a good idea; this may be used in any future court proceedings. Write down information as soon as possible, whilst events are still fresh in the mind. Keep letters, parcels and photos as evidence. If the handwriting is recognised, have the letter or parcel kept as evidence without having the contents read. Remember 1471 on the telephone and have details written down - even if there was no answer. Safetyed runs a cyber stalking department and we have long experience in assisting and advising targets of online harassment. Colin Gabriel Hatcher, SafetyEd's founder and president, is an expert in this field and has been advisor to both state and federal legislatures and law enforcement on stalking issues, including the US Dept. of Justice and the California State Assembly. He has assisted more then 800 people who have been stalked online. As a California Attorney, Colin is also an expert in state and federal cyberstalking law. NEED OUR SPECIFIC HELP? If you need specific help or advice you can now obtain it from our SafetyEd Help Forum. Here you can obtain personalized expert advice for your internet related problem, absolutely free of charge, as well as browse our Forum to see interactive discussions on all kinds of additional internet safety topics. All you have to do to take advantage of our unique help service is to register with our SafetyEd Help Forum and then log on. To do that, please click the box below. GENERAL CYBER STALKING BACKGROUND INFORMATION If you wish to read our own original background material on cyber stalking, Click Here. If you wish to read research material by other people on cyber stalking we have extensive links. To list them Click Here. STALKING AND CYBERSTALKING LAW Colin Gabriel Hatcher is a California Attorney and an expert in cyberstalking law. To read his analysis of the federal laws of stalking and harassment in the USA, and to find out if any of them apply to what is happening to you, Click Here To read Colin's analysis of the California statutes on stalking and harassment, and to find out if any of them apply to what is happening to you, Click Here Not all harassment law is written down in the form of a statute. Some torts (civil wrongs) are defined by Common Law. This means simply that they have been defined through actual cases where people went in to court over a dispute, and the judge or jury made a ruling that came to define the tort. For a summary by Colin of United States Common Law relating to stalking and harassment, Click Here The National Conference of State Legislatures has a list of all US State Cyberstalking Laws. This is updated as new states amend their criminal laws on stalking to include the internet. To visit the NCSL website and read the cyberstalking statutes, Click Here If you wish to read the 1999 report from the US Attorney General to the Vice President on Cyberstalking, compiled by the US Dept. of Justice, and for which Colin Gabriel Hatcher provided research material, Click Here