CONYERS — Crimes have taken on a new form with advances in Internet and computer technology, which has left victims and judicial officials running into difficulties in how to address them.

Renee Tucker was unhappy with how such a case involving her 25-year-old daughter and an unknown stalker was recently handled. Her daughter had received harassing e-mails and text messages, and Tucker did not feel the case was handled with the amount of seriousness it should have received.

“And getting the legal system to do anything about it was extremely
difficult,” Tucker said. “It was almost like a joke ... for whatever reason text messages are not considered as serious as a phone call.”

Tucker said her daughter tried to deal with it on her own for a month and a half before going to authorities. She was basically told by attorneys that a restraining order was the only option to take toward relief, since some sort of physical grievance had to be filed for punishment.

“It’s very hard to prosecute,” said Conyers attorney William Todd, who has handled stalking cases and has served as a prosecutor in his career. “People can be stalked in a number of different ways.”

Todd has found it is rare that people are charged with cyber stalking unless it is combined with other charges. He explained that many judges do not want to hear electronic messages used as evidence.

“It’s just too much malarkey,” Todd said. “A lot of times they don’t want to hear what ‘he said’ and ‘she said.’ They want to get to the important issues.

“Sometimes people will try to say they’re being stalked by somebody, but it’s difficult to prove. They can harass you and just say some mean things that are embarrassing, and may not even be true, but the statute would not cover that,” Todd added.

Some sort of threat must be made, under Georgia law.

The complainant mainly has to prove that he or she fears for their safety or the safety of their immediate family.

Part of the stalking definition in Georgia law includes knowing and willful surveillance without consent for the purpose of harassment and that puts the victim in reasonable distress.

Todd said a lot of Internet stalkers do not realize how serious it is or that they are committing a crime.

“Usually it’s a personal relationship that went sour and that’s how they get revenge,” Todd said. “I think the best thing to do if you’re the victim of something like that is don’t read it because most of the time it goes away.”

In a case he has dealt with, victims have complained of harassing messages on blogs and social networking Web sites.

“People are just living in a cyberworld where everything they do they put on their Twitter account, they put on their MySpace, their Facebook, and they think that their account is secure,” Todd said.

But it exposes the individual to allow anyone to anonymously post negative things, according to Todd.

“And they do it with impunity, without being punished,” Todd said.

“It’s rather cowardly in my opinion,” Todd added, explaining how the victims cannot defend themselves.

The crime usually involves people who are very smart and computer savvy, and putting an end to it takes law enforcement and judicial authorities “who are just as smart and savvy to catch them.”

Besides responsibilities of court officials, Todd said the victims have to have the courage to report it.

“And sometimes people just get away with it,” Todd said.