The trauma of stalking can take a serious toll on women’s hearts and health.
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Her son’s face was red, Tammy recalls. She says she still has the video from her Ring doorbell; from a day her son spent with his father, her ex-partner. Her son ran into the house, crying after his father dropped him off in a rage. At that point, Tammy and her ex still had dual custody over their son, but now, she says, that part of her life reminds her when that all began to change.
Tammy (who didn’t want Ms. to use her full name) was stalked by her ex from 2020 to 2023 and wants other women to know that they can make it out of abusive relationships, just like she did.
Before she split from her ex in January 2020, Tammy says she used to live close to the California school district where she works, the same school her son attended. But after evicting her ex and after experiencing months of digital harassment, stalking and verbal abuse, she said she lives in a new house far from the one she shared with her ex-partner. She said it’s been a long uphill battle through court to be taken seriously and to feel safe again.
After the separation, she says her ex wouldn’t leave her alone. He showed up everywhere she went, drove by her house even when she wasn’t there, sent emails to her from fake accounts. She says even now, she doesn’t like anything on social media or post anything with her face, her son’s face or their location for fear he’ll get to where she is or start messaging her again.
She says she didn’t know what to do when he started harassing and stalking her in January 2020. Three months later, the COVID-19 pandemic started imposing restrictions, so Tammy stayed inside. Even after restrictions were lifted, she said she kept her and her son hidden from her ex; she kept the windows shut and covered; her son’s attendance at school became low. She became depressed, she says she gained weight. Tammy says it was the most stressed she ever felt in her life.
Stalking Poses National Health Concerns
Tammy’s case is not isolated. Stalking is the most common form of violence women face in the United States; a recent study out of Harvard has even linked it to heart disease.
“I knew when my relationship ended that I wasn’t feeling as healthy as I was before,” Tammy said. “It was one of those things like, I don’t have to look my best, I don’t have to run to the gym every day. … I can have that extra snack, or I can eat the cake.”
Although Tammy said she didn’t experience contracting heart disease throughout the harassment and abuse she faced from her ex-partner, she says she did spend too much time afraid and stress eating.
The psychological stress from stalking contributes to the development of heart disease more than any other factor. The study also took into account pre-conditions and behaviors that could have made the women more susceptible to heart disease, like drinking alcohol, smoking and diet. Stalking may not necessarily be physical violence but by its nature, it is violent unto the body and mind of its victim.
“It’s been five years. I’ve never gone on a date again,” she said.
Unlike Tammy, not all of the women in the Harvard study reported that they knew their stalker. According to the 2016-2017 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey—a reference in the recent Harvard study—59.9 percent of women who reported unwanted sexual contact were harassed by an acquaintance, while 11.7 of women’s harassment was by someone who they’d only had a brief encounter with. Over a period of nearly 20 years, the 66,270 women of the study documented being stalked.
Although the study acted as a microcosm for the effects of stalking on women’s minds and bodies, the study zeroed in on a piece of data from its study from 2001: Between 10 and 12 percent of the women in the study reported being stalked during their lifetimes, whereas the national average at the time was around 8 percent. In 2023, the Department of Justice reported that one in three women is stalked within their lifetimes in the U.S.
The Stigma Surrounding Stalking
Maricela Rios-Faust, CEO of the nonprofit Human Options, said the Harvard study not only validates the experiences of women across the country—by proving that stalking is a serious issue—but said it gave her the validation she needed for the work she and her team does every day.
Human Options, based in Orange County, Calif., provides victims and survivors of abuse shelter, legal advice and counseling to get out of a dangerous or possibly dangerous situation. Tammy was one of those survivors, and came to Human Options when the abuse was too much for her to take. They gave her a way out of the relationship and provided her with housing and an attorney.
“Oftentimes the stalking is more detrimental, because you’ve taken the action, you’ve removed yourself, or you’ve somehow gotten the help that you needed. And yet this individual continues to show up,” Rios-Faust said.
In the researchers’ writing, they confirm that their study represents a unique set of data: Stalking has lasting health consequences for women. Likewise, Rios-Faust said the widespread undermining of women’s experiences with stalking has led to stigma around the subject. Far too few people know about the physical toll stalking has on women, which Rios-Faust says is less comprehensible for most people to understand and take seriously.
“There’s something concrete that you could see [in physical abuse],” Rios-Faust said. “You see bruises, you see broken limbs. It’s maybe the precursor, for those more subtle ways and those nuanced ways of maintaining control that are harder to understand.”
Tammy said the judge presiding over her case wasn’t taking her situation seriously enough despite months of documentation of her ex’s harassment. Initially, she obtained a year-long restraining order against her ex. Immediately after, Tammy said she felt protected and safe from her stalker. She said she got healthier, and was even in a space with her mental health where she could give back to Human Options and sit on its survivor advisory council.
Soon after her moment of being on cloud-nine, she says her ex started popping up again. She started receiving dozens of texts from him every day even though she changed her number; she’d see him in random places where she was. This time, Tammy didn’t want to hide. It took a second bout of stalking, along with the video from her Ring camera, for the judge to take her case seriously enough to grant her request for a five-year restraining order and to criminally charge her ex for his violations.
“I think because there wasn’t a big, violent situation going on in my [case], they didn’t take it really seriously until we came back at the end of the one year and had the documentation,” she said. “It’s exhausting.”
No matter how exhausting it was, she said documenting each instance of abuse, harassment and stalking was what helped make the court system take her case more seriously. She said it was a combination of her constant documentation and the support from Human Options that gave her the safety she has now.
“I want to be there to help and show other women that you can do this,” she said. “It’s hard, but it’s possible. It doesn’t seem like it, but it is.”
