By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
Imagine a stalker shadowing your footsteps, lurking in alleyways. You never know if he’s there.
“Very scary — for all of us,” said Ann Kriete.
Ann and Roger Kriete claim their 23-year-old daughter’s been stalked for years by a man twice her age.
“You know had this stranger come into her life, that just wouldn’t leave her alone and it’s been really hard to watch her go through this,” Ann said.
“And he showed no respect or concern for listening to any of the police or the judge or anyone else who’ve spoken to him to desist from this,” Roger said.
The family supports a bill that’d require convicted stalkers to wear GPS monitoring devices, like an ankle bracelet. It’d alert authorities when a stalker moves near a victim’s home or office.
Roger Kriete told Assembly committee members his besieged daughter actually moved away from their Morris County home, but her alleged stalker found her.
“She was stalked while she was at work, she was stalked in her own house, she was stalked at school. She was stalked even when he was out on bail,” he said.
Bill sponsor Nancy Munoz says desperate victims called her about the ankle bracelet idea.
“She was almost unable to speak, because she was trembling, and she said she was so grateful for this because she has lived under the threat of a stalker for so long. She feels this would protect her,” Munoz said.
Each year stalkers harass and terrify more than 6.5 million Americans, but a survey shows only half report it to police and a scant 12 percent of those cases actually result in prosecution. Almost 70 percent of female and more than 80 percent of male victims say stalkers violate restraining orders. Putting a GPS tracker on convicted stalkers could warn victims if a stalker’s on the move in their vicinity. But some defense attorneys oppose the measure.
“My take is it’s a little bit too extreme. I don’t think it’s necessarily warranted in a stalking setting,” said John Marshall.
The new stalker tracking program would become part of New Jersey’s already functioning sex offender electronic monitoring system, keeping start-up costs relatively low, Munoz says.
“It’s an easy monitoring device that would make her safe. I don’t think it’s an overreaction, whatsoever,” she said.
“I believe the peace of mind would allow them to move on with their life and I would hope the minor inconvenience of wearing an ankle bracelet would be a small price to pay to give the innocent victim some protection,” said Roger Kriete.
The committee voted unanimously to release the bill, but consider this: even the governor signed it into law today it wouldn’t apply to the Kriete’s daughter’s case. Her alleged stalker’s still awaiting trial and her parents say their daughter’s still terrified.