Female Stalkers | Victims

Female criminality is rarely studied and little understood. Although the crime of stalking is receiving a growing amount of research attention, the 15 to 20 percent of stalkers who are women are usually subsumed by the larger proportion of male stalkers in all research designs. Gender differences among stalkers have been studied only once, in an Australian community forensic mental health clinic. Purcell et al. found that male stalkers in that study out numbered females by a ratio of four to one. Similarities were more frequent than differences in most demographic, clinical, and forensic variables. The females were significantly less likely to have a history of criminal offenses, violent criminal offenses, or substance abuse diagnoses. They were significantly less likely than men to stalk a stranger, but more likely to pursue a prior professional contact, motivated by “a desire to establish a close and loving intimacy with the victim” (Ref. 7, p 2058).