Something Was Wrong - S19 Ep14: [Lenora Claire] I Caught My Own Stalker (finale)

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

*Content Warning: stalking, death threats, sexual violence, rape, abduction, digital violence, cyber stalking, harassment, torture, intimate partner violence, image-based sexual abuse, nonconsensual pornography.  Lenora’s Website: https://www.lenoraclairellc.com/ Lenora’s Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/lenoraclaire Special K Investigations, Inc.: https://www.specialkpi.com/lenora-claire Special K Investigations Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/SpecialKInvestigationsInc SPARC: Stalking Prevention & Awareness Resource Center: https://www.stalkingawareness.org/ SPARC Risk Assessment Tool: ​​https://www.stalkingawareness.org/sharp/ Stop Stalking Us: https://www.stopstalkingus.com/ Vice Article: “Meet the Erin Brockovich of Stalking”: https://www.vice.com/en/article/4xxg8j/meet-the-erin-brockovich-of-stalking LA Mag Article: “From LA Scene Queen to Victim Rights Activist”: https://lamag.com/style/lenora-claire-scene-queen-victims-rights-activist People Magazine Article: “After Receiving Death Threats from Notorious Celebrity Stalker, Activist Fought Back”: https://people.com/crime/lenora-claire-anti-stalking-advocate-protects-victims/ SWW S19 Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart: Instagram.com/greaterthanokay Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources  FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): https://www.ic3.gov/ Follow Something Was Wrong:Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcastTikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese:Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo

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You had a ton of debt. And you're saying credit counseling society helped with all of it? Yep. And now I can sleep better at night. When debt's got you, you've got us. Give credit counseling society a call today. Visit no more debts.org. Something was wrong is intended for mature audiences as it discusses topics that can be upsetting, such as emotional, physical, and sexual violence, rape, and murder. Content warnings for each episode and confidential resources for survivors can be found in the episode notes. Some survivor names have been changed for anonymity purposes. pseudonyms are given to minors in these stories for their privacy and protection.

Testimony shared by guests of the show is their own and does not necessarily reflect the views of myself, broken cycle media, or wondering. The podcast and any linked materials should not be construed as. as medical advice, nor is the information a substitute for professional medical expertise or treatment. Thank you so much for listening. I'm so incredibly thankful to be closing out our season, especially where we're focused on stalking with you because you are such a legend in this space. Jake Deptula, who I kicked off the season with, raves about you. you. Luckily, we've gotten to meet once in person very briefly. You've been on what came next.

We're so incredibly thankful for all of your time that you've given and that you give to the community. I'm honored to have you not only on the show, but during a season where we're talking about something where you are such an expert in the field. If you don't mind just introducing yourself a little bit and who you were pre-stalking. Thank you for having me. It's so nice to do anything that's survivor-led. That is such a rare and special opportunity. So thank you. again. For people who don't know me, my name is Lenora Claire, and I love that you ask me who I was before I became a survivor because it's now so amassed with my identity, which is kind of a weird thing when the worst thing that happened to you is the first Googled thing as if all my other accomplishments

weren't there. The person that I was prior to being a survivor, I've always been a lot. I'll just say that, I've always been a lot. I was a very precocious child, a bit of a Wednesday Adams. I was very fortunate to grow up in a really progressive household. My father, in the 70s, he helped pioneer gender affirmation surgeries. My dad was originally urologist. He had a very rare disease, and we always knew that he would die young. And then later on, because of his health issues,

he became a psychiatrist, which is a very strange pivot. But that's what he did, because no matter how sick he was, he could do that. I was raised in a home that was very loving and very supportive. I was in a highly gifted magnet growing up, so it was really nice because not only was a bunch of really wonderful, creative, smart kids,

but I was really insulated from bullying because I didn't even know how weird I was. The only negative side, too, was that I really had a hard time once I realized that the world isn't always so kind and loving because I was raised to think that it would be. So when I abruptly found out that was not so, it was really, really hard. When you raise children to just feel loved and supportive with however they show up, you really are capable of anything. Like, I was never made to feel that I had any limitations. I graduated high school when I was 15 and a half, which is a...

early. That was in part with the fact that my father, he had a lot of health issues. It was this need to expedite things because he could pass at any time. So I was always rushing through so that I could do the things so he could be present. When I was young, I was one of the first hot topic models, which is a funny, weird thing. In some universe, maybe you would have walked into the hot topic and it would have been me modeling pleather prom dresses. That was really fun at the time. And the reason I bring that up is that I was one of the first alt-goth girls with a website in like 19. 1998, having a social media presence really early on in the early days before I understood how wonderful and simultaneously dangerous that could be. That's how my now ex, a rock star,

who shall be nameless, discovered me and brought me out to London, so I had some fun times there. I came back to L.A. after that wild experience, deciding that I really wanted to have a career in the creative field. I started throwing parties in Los Angeles that became really popular. and doing art shows. My first grown-up job, I was a writer at a magazine. It's now gone called Frontiers, which was LA's oldest and biggest queer publication. So it was really great to be there. I was really young and interviewing people I later became friends with,

like Paul Rubens and Cassandra Peterson, Elvira. It was such a great time to be able to be paid to be a writer in print. In the early 2000s, I was a full-time writer, and it was amazing, and so many great experiences that came from that and really understanding journalism and storytelling, To make a living, doing something you love is really special. In 2007, I bought this nude oil portrait of B. Arthur that I thought was really fabulous. It inspired me.

I curated an art show called Golden Girls Gone Wild, which was erotic depictions of the Golden Girls. It was one of the first stories on TMZ, and it went super viral. We had 2,000 people at the opening. Other people said it about me, so I'm quoting them, not me. They would say things like, I was the It Girl of Los Angeles. I would throw these huge parties. I'd have my birthday party at the Houdini Mansion, and I was post. for a lot of famous artists, like my friend Olivia, who was the official artist of Playboy

Magazine for 30 years. I was co-hosting a club called Mr. Black, which is where a lot of the early people from Drag Race would go. I was the face of a Vanity Fair ad campaign. 2008 or so, my friend Marla Rutherford photographed me for an ad campaign. If you remember, the NBC USA characters welcome. It was like me, Iggy Pop, all these people, and I was on billboards in Times Square. I was on every stop of the subway. If you went to the 30 Rock, the Rockefeller Center of Famous Building, there was my giant portrait in the window. I had a lot of amazing things like that happening,

and it happened really organically. I was that person where you're like, how is she always on the red carpet? Like, who is this girl? When I try to explain how much fun my life was before all this happened to me and really, frankly, how much I've lost. I mean, I'm proud of the work that I've been doing, but my entire identity, who I was, is completely wiped away.

This birth name was Justin Mavis. He legally had a change to Cloud Star Chaser, so he goes back and forth. My origin story in regards to my stalker was back in 2011, the LA Weekly. They used to do this People of the Year issue, and it was super cool. I was named one of the people of the year. I'm from L.A. This is my hometown. So it was a real honor. It's really hard to make a living in art. So to be able to say that I was running a gallery and able to support myself, it was a big accomplishment. I was really proud of it. And they did this really cool cover story where I have this Capuchin Monkey friend that I've known for 20 years, who was in my wedding and one of my bridesmaids,

but there was a really fun portrait of me holding the monkey in my lap, so very noticeable. And if people don't know what I look like, I have really bright red hair and a look about me. So my stalker was completely unknown to me. He was living in New York at the time. This is 2011, so a very different time that it is now. I want to preface all this by saying that I'm in no way stigmatizing people with mental

health struggles, but it's important to know my stalker is schizoaffective, which is the combination of schizophrenia and bipolar. Besides being schizoaffective, he has a disorder called erotomania. And erotomania is where they have a false relationship with you that doesn't actually exist. He was not getting treatment and he was stalking multiple people, including Ivanka Trump. He had exhibited some dangerous behaviors. He had tried to kill himself in her store.

He had been arrested multiple times for stalking her and he jumped bail and he came to Los Angeles. He opened up to LA Weekly. He saw me. He became fixated on me and he came to my gallery. He was wearing a space suit, which sounds strange, but when you're coming from working in the arts, you're used to kind of fun eccentric characters. So that was not a red flag to me because there were tons of people and tons of wacky gettips. I was like, okay, whatever, Ziggie started as Space Man, that's fine. I engaged with him and we had some conversation.

He looked at me with sort of alarming intensity. And he said, you look like Jessica Rabbit. I said, I hear that sometimes. Thank you. And then he's like, and Lee Lou from the Fifth Element. And he starts naming all these characters that have bright red hair. I'll never forget it. and that's when my life completely changed course.

He looked me in the eye and he said, and I'm going to stalk you. Who says that? In that moment, all I could think to do was remove him from the gallery and I didn't think much of it. I just sort of brush it off as like a weird experience. And then a couple days later,

a bunch of friends were sending me blog links about this man who at that point, the Trumps had hired bounty hunters to extradite him back trial in New York and he went to jail in Rikers Island. While he was there, he started sending me unhinged letters to my gallery. they weren't threatening at first.

They just sort of were rambling and all over the place and I didn't really know what to do about it. And then they very quickly escalated to incredibly graphic, violent, sexual assault, kidnap, and homicide fantasies about me.

It was so terrifying. All I could think to do in that moment was to close my galleries. Think about what you do for a living, this thing that you work really hard for. I could not have a public-facing job at this point because he knew where I was and I was just in such fear.

that was the thing that made sense to me. How old were you around the time that the stocking started, if you don't mind sharing? I was 30. I went to police seeking help, and I brought this stack of really intense, very heavy threats, and they looked me in the eye, and they told me to dye my hair and get off the internet. I kept saying, this is a well-documented person with a long history, and I have these threats. I go as far as to say that they victim blamed and shame me. That was the Northeast Division of LAPD.

part of the difficulty is that law enforcement, for the most part, they're not given adequate risk assessment training. So they don't even have the knowledge to know when something is just harassment or when you're under real threat. So they just brushed me off. At that point, I started realizing I wasn't going to get any help. I lost my livelihood. I didn't know what I was going to do. This was a very stressful, awful time. I wasn't married yet.

I lived alone in a really small apartment because LA is expensive. What was especially scary for me was that my stalker fantasized about gassing me through my door was Elyclon B, which was used to kill my relatives in the Holocaust, and then rate me and kill me, right? So very intense stuff. The lack of sleep, the insomnia, that's where all those issues started kicking in. I would used to put towels under my door. I didn't even know what to do. I wasn't getting help. Under any normal circumstance, my daddy was my best friend. I would have definitely talked to him about this, but my father was dying at this point. This was like a year before he died. It was really, really heavy because the person I wanted to go to, like, I didn't want his last thoughts to be about me in this condition. I was really holding it all inside while going to visit him in the hospital. When we talk about a victim impact with all crimes, but stalking really infiltrates all areas of your life. That was really, really, really heavy at that time. He was sending me these death threats and these rape threats.

And I really didn't have anyone to speak to because stalking is such an isolating crime. it's the kind of thing where even when you're sharing it with people who your loved ones who are well-intentioned, a lot of times they don't know how to help you. They're uncomfortable with it. It's too scary. Or they maybe give advice, which is well-intentioned, but not great advice. Like everybody was saying to me, just block him, just block him. Because when he got out of jail, he had online access and was then sending me all the threats. When you're truly being stalked and not just harassed, you don't have the luxury of blocking them because that's evidence. You need to collect all that evidence, not to mention, do the risk assessment and know, what the threats are. Everyone said, you have enough threats, you can get a restraining order.

The difficulty I had at that point was because he moved all over the country was the serving of the restraining order. Just because you can get a restraining order granted, if they evade, you have no way to get it to them. And restraining orders don't go into effect until they're served. Because my stalker, he came from a wealthy family and he would bounce around the country. You kind of have to become your own detective when law enforcement isn't helping you. On the timeline, we'll say this is around 2013. I had to learn how to track his IP so that I would know what location he was at so I would know what level of risk I'm under. If he's in California, I'm in heavy risk. If he's somewhere else, I'm okay for the day. That's when I started to

learn how to advocate for myself and do that sort of work. I would get increasingly frustrated with the lack of resources and the lack of help. And especially at that time, if your stalking didn't fall under domestic violence, you're in this weird gray area. There were no resources. I mean, still, there's still woefully few resources for people. And even when you're stalking does fall under DV, the nonprofits, they're so overextended. There isn't enough help to go around for really critical situations. So I just started going, okay, this is crazy. I had lost my gallery. Everything I did in nightlife, like all the cool clubs I was running, I didn't do that anymore. So my income was just gone. Now that it's been almost two years throughout law enforcement is saying,

we can't do anything about this and you're just continuing to document essentially? Exactly. I'm trying to learn risk minimization techniques for myself. What can I do? And going, okay, I don't post where I am when I'm there and the hypervigilance. And that's what a lot of the health issues that I have now started to because the toll that it takes on your body is just so intense. So giant impact on your physical mental health, your ability to earn a living, your identity, your freedom. Yes, dating and relationships. I mean, just awful. All areas of my life are impacted. So it was then I started working in reality TV and I became a casting producer and a lot of people's favorite reality shows. I've like reinvented myself in my early 30s. I start working at a really top

casting firm. I love everybody that I'm working with. Things are going great. And then my stalker starts sending death threats to my boss. I have a pretty high tolerance for when you do stuff to me, but when you start to do stuff that people that I care about, that's on a whole other level. My boss, who's a very close friend, this person who saved me from my situation and is mentoring me and giving me a whole new craft is now getting death threats. So I take his death threats to the police. And I'm like, it's not just me. I thought maybe it's happening to a man.

I still got absolutely nothing from LAPD. So that's when I was just like, I work in TV now. I'm media trained with stalking. A lot of times, almost 50% is domestic violence overlap. A lot of times survivors, they don't have the capacity to come forward in this particular way. Or maybe there's children involved. It's a lot more complicated. for them or they're just anxious around media and I'm like, I was made for this. I've been on TV

since I was five. I got this. So in 2015, that's when I decided to go public, which also the important thing to note is this was before me too. I bring that up because it's already hard enough in the current climate to be a public survivor, but back then it was even worse. I did a show called Crime Watch Daily, which is the first time I told my story in public. And I did that not because I was attention seeking. I'd been on TV a million times. I did not need this. I did it because I needed help. I didn't want to die. I didn't want this person to take my life. My dad was dead and I didn't have anybody protecting me and I was just like, you know what? At this point, I have nothing to lose. I'm just going to be really loud with it. Jezebel did one of the early articles on me because I was like, I'll go to

feminist media. They'll be supportive and they were great. Now I'm being more public with this. That was a wild experience. Here I am, this woman who's getting awful threats of which I can back up with insane amounts of evidence. And as soon as I did that, my Twitter was blowing up with people shaming me because of how I look, acting like I'm attention seeking, dress how you want to be addressed, a lot of weird internalized misogyny, the public not believing me. That was a whole other experience. Right around that time in 2015 is when I got my first temporary restraining order served. And the way that it was served was that my stalker who stocks many people besides me, I want to protect her identity, but there was another woman that he was stalking. And he went to that person's workplace and told the front desk that he was there to rape her. The police were called and the police detained him. They didn't arrest him. They detained him. And they saw my pending restraining order and they served him. And then let him go. That's when the more activism side of stuff started kicking in. I'm friends with Polly Perrette and actress people might remember from NCIS. She has a stalker. She's been kind of private about her situation.

She created this support group of other people who are being stalked in L.A., just the sort of friend circle. So for the first time, I had people who we could talk to. She was friends with Congressman Adam Schiff, who at that point was just my local congressman. He wasn't House of Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff. She brought me over to him. And then I started working with him, which was amazing because very rapidly, he took me in to meet with the chief of police, the then district attorney and got all that stuff going. And then as I was doing more articles, people started coming to me for help because I would talk about risk minimization and the tracking and all that stuff. And I started realizing, oh my God, this is how bad it is,

that nobody is getting help and they're just writing to me this random person. To date, I've done over 100 restraining orders for people. I was doing that for people, and I do court support as well, because it's something people don't realize is that the way restraining order court works is that there's two sessions, a morning session and a night session, and they book you at the same time so they overlap, and you're there for hours, and you're there with your stock or your abuser in the hallway for hours. When you go to like Olive Garden or something, for your table, they'll give you one of those little like ding, ding, ding your tables ready. How hard is it to create a green room where we could put victims in where they can be safe.

That's when I started seeing all of the gaps in services and all of the weak spots. I started doing all this work as I'm struggling with my own situation. Because this is ongoing, right? Can you go into a little bit of detail about was it daily contact? It was almost daily. So because these schizoaffective, sometimes it would be quiet. And other times I get like 100 emails in a day. Sometimes they'd be like hypersexual.

And other times they'd just be nonsical. My stalker at different times will think that we're. married. He just gets these ideas that are not true. He would see something on my social media that was really innocuous. I'd be at a party. And then he would send me an email that says, you're not using your superpowers correctly. I need to kidnap you so that we can fight ISIS together and I can harness your powers. Every little thing about my life was hyper-scrutonized and ultimately like a threat. Any sort of normalcy was constantly being taken from me. And I kept trying because that's all you can do is just go, I'm going to try and do my best here. I'm getting nearly daily threats. There's really

rarely a day that I didn't hear from him. He became really fixated on my dog, and at one point, he tried to kidnap my dog from the dog groomer. That was really difficult. He never figured out where I lived, which was great, because I did everything to hide my address. Your listeners, if they don't know how to wipe their home address to the internet, I could send you a link that they can follow or their services like delete me. We'll get all the links for y'all. Yeah, people don't realize that for a whole dollar. I can find out where you live, what your car is. It's insane the amount of information that's out there that's being aggregated. Oh, hey, how's it going?

Amazing. I just finished paying off all my debt with the help of the Credit Counseling Society. Whoa, seriously? I could really use their help. It was easy. I called and spoke with a credit counselor right away. They asked me about my debt, salary, and regular expenses, gave me a few options, and help me along the way.

You had a ton of debt. And you're saying Credit Counseling Society helped with all of it? Yep. And now I can sleep better at night. When debt's got you, you've got us. Give Credit Counseling Society. media call today, visit no more debts.org. In 2016, he assaulted somebody on the Harvard campus.

He was very fixated with the School of Divinity because he thought he was Jesus at that point. It's my understanding that he actually got up in the lecture hall and started to give like a fake lecture. And then the security chased him around and he decked a security guard. I was at work. I was casting MTV True Life at that point.

And I remember having to step out and be like, oh, excuse me. And then having to deal with Harvard police, who they were really cool. My stalker's a lot of people. It's a very prolific stalker. In 2016, we started filming, I'm not going to say the name of the show for a bunch of reasons, but one of the biggest true crime shows. I decided to go public with my story again because I was just in such a bad way.

We start filming what would become a two-hour special. The last hour is almost exclusively my story. As a producer myself, which I am, I've produced a lot of TV. I understand why on some level the producers made this decision. A lot of these true crime shows, they're used to covering homicide stories. They're not used to covering living survivors. They're also not used to doing unadjudicated cases. The exciting producerial choice for them, they decided to do, without asking me,

they took away my consent, they interviewed my stalker. They just did it. That footage, it is terrifying. And in that footage, you see all the things, he's screaming, he's threatening to kill me, he's going off, like, it is terrifying. So on one hand, I'm grateful to have this footage because, The 17 million people who watched that show, nobody doubted my story anymore. I'm like, is that what it takes?

Do you need to be on like one of the biggest shows showing the footage for people to believe you? So that happened. I was emailed by my stalker after he did the interview telling me that he did this interview and that we were going to be together forever. So I learned for my stalker. And then I reached out to production. I was like, what the hell have you done? And what they did to sort of remedy it was they brought in a top forensic psychologist

who I'm now friends with who then evaluated it. and then he was able to look at the language my stalker was using and realize that my stalker spoke about me like an object. And it's much easier to do harm to an object than a person. My case, because of all of that and being on the show was then elevated at LAPD. They have a unit called the Threat Management Unit, which is the best in the entire country. What's really messed up is that the most elite, educated unit on stocking that's really only for celebrities. Celebrities are people who, for the most part, have the income to higher security and lived in gated communities, and that's who gets the best resources. So my case called elevated there.

I had one amazing detective. His name is Cletus Carlton, who in a funny twist, is now one of my two partners in my PI company. So very full circle. 2016, Trump wins. I'm devastated as are all of my friends. My stalker, who wasn't even supposed to be in the state of New York because it was crimes towards Ivanka, was caught a block away from Trump Tower. So my stalker went to jail again in New York. And then shortly after he was being transferred to a psych facility. I was thinking like he's going to get some real time, but people may not understand that stalking in most states is a wobbler. And if you don't know what a wobbler is, it's a crime that could be a misdemeanor or a felony.

And for the most part, most stalking, unfortunately, they only get a misdemeanor, which is another thing. When you're being stopped by somebody across state lines and it's a misdemeanor, they don't extradite on a misdemeanor. So even if you have the restraining order and they're violating the restraining order and they have a misdemeanor warrant, they don't move on it. And that's when I was walking my then-minister Pintra-Nomi, and I get this call, and I thought that I was being clowned. I thought it was fake, and it said LAPD and Secret Service are on the phone. And I was like, who the hell?

Like, who is this? Like, what? It was, in fact, LAPD and Secret Service informing me that my stalker had escaped from the psych facility that he was in. And because Ivanka is now the first daughter that it was their duty to let me know that he was out. I remember thinking, they're going to get him. Like, woo! Again, he went to jail for a short amount of time, and then he was out, and then he was very actively stalking me. He was literally stalking the president's daughter and the laws could not keep him in jail.

That just really highlights if we haven't already hit this home already, how needed legislation is. Right. And we can also get into it. It's not even just the legislation because if law enforcement doesn't believe you to begin with, it doesn't matter what the laws are. They're already not enforcing the laws that currently exist. Then in 2017, Vice did an article on me where they called me the Aaron Brockovich of Stalking, which went super, super viral. Badass comparison, because Aaron Brockovich is everything. She's everything. It's a lot to live up to.

What's interesting was that I had gone super viral. So I'm doing tons of restraining orders. I'm going to court with people. I'm on the phone all the time because I'm very accessible. People could find my social media, explaining things to them, explaining to them what a wobbler is, how a temporary restraining order is longer than what they call. a permanent restraining order, but it's not really permanent. Like, I'm just walking with people through all the education that I've amassed,

how to track the IP, how to look for a GPS, when they're in your GPS and your phone. I just amass all this information. I'm doing all this stuff for other people, but yet I'm very much at risk myself. So I'm like in this weird space. After he gets out of jail for stalking Ivanka again, now he's very, very hyper-fixated on me. My now husband, we just started dating very early on, like maybe two weeks into our relationship. He started sending my husband death threats and,

my husband's a lawyer and sending the threats to his law office. My stalker, at this point, is really fixated on kidnapping me. He then comes to L.A. with the sole purpose of kidnapping me with the intent to rape me and kill me. He was sending me kidnap threats and he told me where he was going to kidnap me from. If I had just blocked him and brushed him off, then I wouldn't have known that. My stalker told me he was going to kidnap me from L.A. Comic-Con, which was on the weekend. I'm telling LAPD, even at this special unit that has my case, what's happening, this unit, they don't work on the weekends, which is insane. My stalker was also stalking at that point Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow.

I don't know if she still does, but Kim have this amazing security team, like the best of the best. And so I was in interaction with them, and I thought for sure that Kim Kardashian security team was going to catch the stalker. That's not what happened. It was me. When my stalker told me he was going to kidnap me from L.A. Comic-Con, he didn't know. that I know the owners. They were wonderful. I want to say those kids were never at risk. They're so amazing at Comic-Con. And I work with them and we hired extra security. We dressed them up as Batman and Robin. And when he came to kidnap me, that's who grabbed him and we held them and turned him into

LAPD. So I caught my own stalker. I had to do that. I didn't have a choice. We capture him. He gets arrested. While he's an LAPD holding Kim Kardashian, people are able to serve him the restraining order. So you're welcome, Kim. And then there was some kind of incident prior. And I always want to be clear about this because I just know what's been reported. There was some incident with him and Gwyneth Paltrow's children at her school. I don't know exactly what happened, but Gwineath Paltrow also served a restraining order. Then it took about a year. I did not know that I was eligible for any services. Every state has a victim's compensation fund. I didn't know that in California I was entitled to $5,000 of therapy with any therapist of my choice because there was only a domestic

violence advocate and I didn't fall under that. I just fell under stocking. It took a year. I was getting no services. It was super intense, like all the stuff going on. I was working with the deputy district attorney who was really cool, but I always tell the story, because there's a lot that goes into this. I'm somebody who's been raped. So as awful as my rape was, I think most people can agree homicide is worse. My deputy district attorney, when going through the threats, because a lot of the threats mentioned Zyclon B, he said, okay, we're going to keep your rape threats because I believe his penis could be used as a weapon. But Zyclon B, I don't think that's really going to hold up in court. They didn't use any of my death threats. They just let them go. And the reason why I bring this up

is very timely because there was a ruling recently with our current Supreme Court, which I find very questionable. The ruling is called Counterman. And Counterman, he's a stalker out of Colorado. He's a convicted stalker who was stalking a female musician. He was convicted and he thought that that was a violation of his First Amendment rights because he wanted to send her death threats and the current Supreme Court ruled in his favor. So a lot of people don't know about this ruling. And what's extra scary about that is that it all revolves around intent. It's really dangerous when you have a diluted stalker like mine, who their counsel could argue, they thought that they were married and they didn't mean to scare her. I don't know that I would have gotten the conviction that I got

after this ruling. Terrifying. So at that point, my stalker was on a million dollars bail, which was so lucky. This is 2017. You would never get that now. He wasn't able to bail out. He was there for the year. And that's the other thing, too. Like when you're going through this court stuff, they kept pushing the day. It's just a nightmare. You're constantly having to relive it. You're constantly having to do your own discovery. And paperwork and phone calls on top of currently being stocked, having to have a job. You have to survive in life. Real life is just fucking hard enough. Right. So it was about a year. And then we were about to have the trial. I was literally walking up the courthouse steps. I had worked on my victim impact statement. This is a lot of years in the making.

I really put a lot into it, and I get there, and the DDA, I quite like him, so I don't want to sound like I don't like him. But he says, I'm going to do a plea. I go, what do you mean? And he's like, this is the best thing for you. You don't want to go through a trial, and we got felony stalking. We weren't going to get kidnapped because he didn't forcefully take my body more than 10 feet off the ground.

So that was out of play. The criminal threats, they bargained it down to felony stalking. So I got the thing, which is so rare, which is a felony conviction, it has to do with credible threat. I had death threats. I had rape threats. So what had made him a felon for the first time, so that was a big win. But one thing people have to understand is that California has this proposition called Prop 57. And I very much understand why people voted for it. Prop 57 is sold as reduced sentencing for nonviolent offenders, which sounds great. But what they don't explain is a list of crimes that are considered nonviolent in the state of California, which includes rape of an

unconscious person for sodomy, human trafficking, and stalking. All of which I consider to be violent crimes, but they're all deemed nonviolent. So even though I got my stalker on felony stalking max, which should be a four-year sentence, it was immediately turned into two. All that work for two years, I decided to just accept the plea because I was really not given much of a choice. He was in jail for two years. Somebody who worked in the jail who's not supposed to tell me this information, but they did because I, you know, my story's so public that people will find me. They told me that the whole time he was writing letters to me, but he didn't have an address for me, so they didn't actually go out. So that's very telling.

I got married a month before he was released because I wanted to have my wedding day free of all these awful stuff. I was very public with my wedding. I had Morgan McMichaels from Drag Race, dressed as Nomi from Showgirls and a Capuchin Monkey and Mermaids at the Swing Pool. I had the most fabulous wedding because I really not only just wanted to like savor those moments of freedom because I didn't know what my life would be like afterwards, but I really wanted to show survivors that even after all this shit, you are deserving of healthy love. You can find somebody. It's very difficult, but it is possible. I'm also a survivor, domestic violence, and sexual assault at different parts of my life. So I come with a lot of trauma. I'm not saying that romance is the

answer to everything. It's not. It's nice to have people who love you unconditionally, especially after so much trauma. And to your point, it really speaks to the freedom that incarceration of your stalker gives you as a victim. That feeling of the clock is ticking is something I continually hear from stalking victims. So I got married October of 2019. He got out December of 2019. He's released after serving two years. Within three days, he's making YouTube videos about me. Three days. I've lost track of how many times I've put him back in jail. Unfortunately, every time since it's been a misdemeanor, so it's not very long because he's gotten slicker about how he does it. People constantly say to me, I'm so sorry that happened to you as if it's past tense. And it's not.

It's ongoing. I did have to be. an ankle monitor on him, especially now that we're moving away from incarceration. For a lot of crimes, that's a good thing. But when it's the threat to the community, that is not a good thing. I wrote this op-ed for the LA Weekly, and it's about what it means to be a progressive person who's also a crime survivor. Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why is it black or white? Why is it everybody in jail or nobody in jail? If we're going to move away from incarceration in general with these lighter sentences for some of these crimes, going back to the ankle monitor, that seemed like a reasonable thing. I was living in a different condo than I'm in now. I'm always in secure places. And somebody

broke in. So immediately my first thought was, oh my God, it's my stalker. I called up LAPD. Here's the thing, what they don't tell you when you have an ankle monitor on. Besides the fact, yes, I know they can slide off. What they don't tell you is that nobody at the Department of Corrections is monitoring that thing. Just isn't a thing. They only use that after the fact to prove something. So it took me a really long time to even find out that that wasn't my stalker. For years, I've been advocating saying, listen, we have GPS on our phones. Why can't survivors be given an app where let's just say your restraining order is a thousand feet? Why wouldn't it give me advanced warning? Why don't I have an app where I can monitor this myself? It's common sense. So that's something

I've been advocating for for a long time. Another thing that I've been advocating for, if you can send me a death threat over email, why can't I send your restraining order over email? There's ways to know if the document has been opened. That is not hard. We have precedent for a lot of things, like foreclosure notices, and there's other ways that you can electronically process and deliver these documents. We have to do better by people. The restraining order is just a piece of paper. It may not ultimately do the thing, but it's the best thing that we have towards getting you to where you need to be. The other thing that I always really want to talk about, too, is that when it comes to stalking, people always go, we need better laws. We do need better laws.

That's true. But again, if from the jump, if law enforcement doesn't listen to you and doesn't take you seriously and the judges don't understand the crime. You're not getting anywhere. It doesn't matter what the laws are because they're not enforcing the laws that we already currently have. So we need a lot of education. We need a lot of prevention. There's actually a million dollar grant that's going through to help this issue. So that money will be allocated to doing all these things. The Office of Violence Against Women is very appropriately named. It's handling all gender-based violence issues. 30 years ago, Biden wrote VAWA and got it passed back when he was a senator. Almost all the protections that we have as women, they come from this. That's what the offices allocated to

look over. That's part of the exciting thing. The group, we just went to D.C., we went to Department of Justice, Office of Violence Against Women in the White House. There's an amazing survivor, advocate, and activist that I'm friends with named Onanosset. Our crimes are actually really, really similar, so we vibed very well. We were looking at this thing that the Office of Violence Against Women was doing, where they would have these listening sessions. They did invite, survive, versus the White House. They did one for image-based sexual abuse, which is what we call it now. We don't say revenge porn anymore. They did one of these listening sessions at the White House about a year ago. And I sent it to Anna and I was like, this is so great. We need one for stalking. So the two of us

started brainstorming and talking to Spark. And that's exactly what happened this year. Debbie Riddle, who is the founder of Stocking Awareness Month after she lost her sister Peggy 20 years ago, Caitlin Mathis, Anna Nossett, who I mentioned earlier, Aziza Murph. and myself, along with Spark. We were invited to speak at both Department of Justice. We did like a four-hour session. We did a panel. It was unbelievable.

And then the following day, we did the White House. When we were walking up the White House steps, I just felt like we are here, we deserve to be here. We were heard in such a major way. And I feel that we did a really good job of explaining everything from the domestic violence side of it to the stranger acquaintance side of it and really expressing to DOJN.

White House, the impact of this crime, the terror, what it's like. And a couple of us like myself were policy people. So we were also able to not just come with concerns, but come with calls for action. One of the things that I brought up right when we got to Department of Justice was I said, I am a survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault. And the way that this crime stocking is different than those two crimes. And again, sometimes there's overlap. Sometimes the offender does all those things. But what's different is that I've had 20 years to heal from my sex. sexual assault. 20 years is a long time. I've been a lot of work and I feel like I'm doing okay. Stocking, you never get to heal because it's never really over. The hypervigilance, all of that.

What that does to a person is so intense. I also mentioned both the Department of Justice and the White House. When it comes to stalking, a lot of times when we're looking at statistics, you have to remember that it's a widely underreported crime. So for a long time, we went off these old stats, which went back to like 2013. And the old stats were like, 7.5 million Americans. At that point, it was more or less 90% former intimate partner with a DV overlap, probably 10% stranger acquaintance like mine. We got these new stats this past year. It's up to 15 million, so real silent epidemic. And it's very interesting in that the statistics reflect it's very close to 50% former intimate partner, 50% stranger acquaintance. So what does that tell you?

The internet. We live on the internet. And again, I'm not saying don't enjoy it. It's a wonderful thing, but we have to be really conscientious about how much information we put out there because there's people who create these parisocial relationships and it could get dangerous regarding lethality. When we're looking at statistics, when it comes to the underreporting, we're never really going to know. There's huge communities. Sex workers don't report this crime. A lot of times people of color don't report this crime. Trans people don't report this crime. It's really underreported. The only time that we get an accurate reporting is when there's a body, when there's a homicide, except with stalking, we don't because you never see that additional charge.

So we can't even prove a lethality. There are so many crimes. For example, take Nicole Brown Simpson, OJ stalked her. That's never part of the conversation. There was never a stalking charge. So if we're trying to look at how severe a crime, like this is a crime which is constantly minimized. And part of that is because we're not doing that additional charge, right?

So we can't even say X amount of homicides a year have a stocking component. We don't even have that. I think that's a huge part about why people don't realize the severity of the crime. I am now on the LA District Attorney Crime Victims Advisory Board. When I got on the board, I brought up the fact that I wasn't given social services because we didn't have any stocking specific reps. Tenetia from the District Attorney Bureau of Victim Services, we worked and we were able to bring Dana from Spark over and then she trained 15 stalking specific advocates.

So we have 15 that are there, which is so awesome. the then new district attorney said that he wasn't going to be prosecuting trespassing because in LA that's like a lot of houseless people or kids just smoking weed and stuff. And so I had to point out that when it comes to stocking, we need all the charges we can get. And we basically made a carve-out so that they would include that. So that's kind of like some of the stuff that I do, the DA. There is an amazing nonprofit called Spark. As amazing as they are, they're also limited. And they'll tell you this too. What Spark does is they do education and information. And they are wonderful. They're the ones who have the best social media with all statistics and the educated, they do trainings.

They have a really great free risk assessment model, which is really validating for a lot of people because a lot of times people will say to themselves, is this harassment? Will this flame out? Or like, am I in danger? It's called Sharp. It's the Spark Risk Assessment tool and you plug in your information, then it tells you what level of risk you're under. It can be really affirming for some people who haven't been able to like name what's happening to them. Survivors, much like perpetrators, are everyone. Anyone can be stalked. Let me tell you about Tracy Walder. I love Tracy.

Tracy is unbelievable. Talk about a legend. So Tracy Walder is ex-FBI, ex-CIA. She wrote a book called The Unexpected Spy. My stalker became fixated on her. He starts sending her terrible things. She then contacts me. We develop a friendship.

I don't think she said this exact quote, but I'm not outing her. She mentioned it on social media. She said that the stalking experience, and I want to be sensitive about the threats, but the threats that he was making were scarier than when she was interrogating terrorists in Afghanistan. And again, stalking happens to everybody, including XTAX FBI.

Anybody can be a victim of it. Just like anybody can be a perpetrator. I think about Tracy a lot, and she's so amazing, and her videos are amazing. She's a correspondent on News Nation. I'll say it a million times. It's a complicated, nuanced crime. It's a weird crime. And with stalking, like, there's little things that only we as the victim know to be a crime.

Patrick Brady said something where he called it homicide in slow motion. It's a really powerful quote. I'm sure I said it wrong, but that is what it is. When I started meeting other public survivors, I started realizing my experience was not unique. That's why I started my company, Lenora Claire, consulting. I started seeing a lot of my friends who were doing this cool new job called intimacy coordination, which is for scripted TV and film. And it's where, like, let's just say someone's playing a sex assault survivor on a show or a love scene or something. It's somebody who is there to make sure everything is kosher and everyone's respected on set. And I was like, that's so wonderful. It's great that they have that, but they have that because

there's unions protecting them. When we do all these crime shows that people love to watch, these documentaries, there's no union. It's unscripted. So there's literally nobody looking out for you. A lot of us who've done these shows, you've had producers force narratives on us that are not authentic. They're really hungry for a sound bite. They really push us. For me, even, they've had me recreate my own trauma, like in recreations. They've had me play myself and I just associate when that happens, and that's not healthy. There's a lot of really not great stuff that happens on. these shows, there was another true crime production that was quite big on a major network. I'm not going to say what it is because I know the people involved, but it was also an unadjudicated case.

And the producers thought they were doing a nice thing by putting all the victims together. When this case is unadjudicated, the offenders' counsel is basically trying to say it's a conspiracy. So what have they now done? They've now filmed them all together that's going to further that, which is why with the Cosby survivors, they didn't get to interact with each other until after litigation and then eventually the criminal stuff, they were kept apart because they're not supposed to cross-pollinate stories. These producers don't understand the law. They don't understand what they're doing. They think they're doing a nice thing in some ways they are, but they're also jeopardizing our case. So when you hire my company, we come with that knowledge as well. The reason why I call it

Lenore and Clare Consulting was not out of ego, I just thought it was only going to be me. And I thought it would be me being a victim survivor liaison on set because I'm a survivor. I've told my story on camera, but I've also been a producer. And I can speak the link. to make the most ethical, kind, respectful, intentional, meaningful experience for people. And then I got a panel of other crime survivors together so we can make mindful recommendations. For example, Amanda Knox is part of my company. So if you were doing a film on wrongful conviction, like you could talk to her about what that experience is like. Or Tara Newell. You could talk to these people. And I also provide trauma-informed, amazing homicide detectives, genetic genealogist,

forensic psychologists from my casting background. It's like a one-stop. shop, if these productions want to make ethical choices about everything from forming how they do the interviews with survivors to having a fellow survivor on set, to I advocate for things. In the UK, they have what's called duty of care. Unlike here in the U.S., when you put a crime survivor on camera, they do psychavals to make sure they're okay to do it, which is so crucial because there are a lot of times where someone is so fresh in their trauma and maybe shoving a camera in their face at that moment is not the move. I didn't know there was a term for that, duty of care. I just did a very big production. This production that we did is unbelievable,

and I kept in touch with the survivors. We did everything making sure ahead of time that everything that the survivors were being asked, they were comfortable, they didn't have a camera in their face feeling they were interrogated. I feel like a lot of the projects I've seen on stalking are really sensationalized. They don't have any call to action. I've had three TV deals, and none of them have made it to air, because a lot of the networks, They say that they don't want content that's helpful. They love a homicide with a twist. They've been pretty awful.

And I really do hope to get to properly tell these stories in a meaningful way with like a call to action. And that's just something that I've been working on for years. I've come close. It's been really frustrating. You have every qualification to do so. I'm sure it's just a matter of time. I cannot thank you enough for being willing to share so much of your story and your story. your knowledge with all of us. I also would love to hear about your PI work and all the other things

that you're doing. Yeah. So the way that it works in California is you need a couple of years of 2,000 hours each. So I'm technically an investigator. I don't have my license yet to be a private investigator, but my two partners, they're both former LAPD, was a combined 60-year experience. They're both licensed and we're licensed in California, Nevada. The origin story there was Cletus Carlton, who I mentioned, was the one really good detective I had at LAPD, and he retired. After he retired, he became a PI. And what would happen is people would come to me. And they would say, you know, X, Y, Z is happening. Law enforcement isn't listening to me. I would do the restraining order stuff. And then for some of the people, I would send them over to Cletus. He would take them on his clients, and then he would do security

assessments of their home, risk assessment, monitoring their stalker. Basically, all the things that you wish police would do that they don't do, go into court with them, all that stuff. When the strike happened, and entertainment slowed down, Cleita said to me, why don't you come join the firm? You should be a PI. And I thought about it. I was like, oh my God, he's like, you're already doing it. You're already doing it.

You're trauma informed. You're coming from the survivor perspective. And not to mention, a lot of people, they rather talk to you than us because we're ex-cops. So now we have our company, which is Special K Investigations, Inc. I'm so proud of the work that we're doing. It's kind of complicated because we aren't a nonprofit.

It is a company. You have to hire us. You have to retain us. Our two specialties, are stalking, obviously, and missing persons. Those are the two spaces. A lot of people don't realize that, for the most part, unless you're a minor, they're not looking. That's a really brutal fact, for the most part. A lot of times with missing persons, they don't know the crime has been committed. That's how they kind of see it. But the work that we do is literally all the things that you need.

We send tech experts to your house. We walk through and put up your security camera and we do all the monitoring. We do everything that you need. And we're 24 hours a day. literally 24 hours day you can call us and we'll come and we'll intervene and do what needs to be done. One of the things that I think that's really interesting about our company is that the majority right now as it stands that my PI clients are actually sex workers and I really want to get into that because I want to talk about all the communities that don't want to do the traditional way. There are other options for them. We have a lot of sex workers, a lot of queer community.

A lot of our clients are only fans creators. If you're a top only fans creator besides the fact that like you get a lot of attention, The top only fans creators, you have teams that interact with your fans. You may not know who your problem person is. You may not know who's threatening you. So when you go to a feature dance or a public appearance, this problematic person who you're not actually interacting with may come to see you and you don't even know. And we really are full service.

If you're anxious about what to wear to court, I'll help dress you to do you to do media about this. I got the media. I can help you with that. To law enforcement liaison because Cletus and Leo, my partners are former LAPD, cops listen to them if you need that intervention. We have a lot of people who are just not comfortable with traditional law enforcement and prefer the way that we handle things. And that's such an awesome space to be in. And I'm so proud of that. It's very incredible. Your trauma informed, you're a survivor

yourself. And this is why we are important in the media, in the work and in the law. We have a perspective that's important. Something that I've heard both from retired officers who are now PIs or people that are currently working in the system is even when cops want to investigate things, they also have limited resources. So that's another reason why private access to someone like yourself or your company can be really vital for victims. I've had shooting victims who have had to hire private security or PI for certain things. And they work a lot of times with law enforcement too. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You're absolutely right with the private investigations. You have their 60 plus years of investigatory experience. And the other thing

that we're doing, too, which I pretty sure we're the first in the country, since PSF can get kind of expensive and I want to be as inclusive to everybody as possible, we're going to be putting up a Patreon. There's like a multi-tier component to it. And for a really small entry, you'll be able to like watch videos of me talking about how to do restraining orders. The next tier of services, we have an app. It's like a cloud where we can safely store your evidence. The next tier would be you'd get those videos and then we can help you track your case and safely do that. So you also have access to the cloud that we have. And because a lot of times people, their stuff gets hacked into or maybe it's a former partner who is access to things, whatever that is. So we're rolling that out really soon. Jake's going to help me set it all up.

What is the stalking like today? Is it still a daily basis thing that you're having to navigate while you're doing all of this epic shit? Yeah, because I've been public about my stalker, I've also had in-cell men's rights groups threaten me. So that's not the only place that my threats are coming from. At one point, they tried to docks me unsuccessfully. They put me on a rape list. Being a public survivor is not easy. It is very complicated. As for my stalker, the convicted one, I've had to put him in jail multiple times. Unfortunately, I've only been able to get him on misdemeanors after the original felony, so it's not for very long. He's gotten slicker. He does a lot of third party contact stuff now, so he'll contact nonprofits I work with and friends. I did get an indirect one with him

last year, July 4th. But there have been a few accounts that I suspect are him following me, but no direct contact for almost a year. And he's busy stalking other people. And he's still out right now. He is, and he's in Los Angeles with no ankle monitor, no monitoring, no nothing. For somebody who's experiencing heightened stocking right now, is there any other tips that you could offer? Jake had mentioned documentation is huge. You touched on that as well. As I mentioned before, the wiping of your personal information off the internet is really great. No one needs to be able to access your home address for a dollar. That is wild. If you think that you're being stocked, it's so important to be really conscientious with your social media usage.

not saying don't be on it, don't enjoy it, just use it responsibly, don't post where you are until after you left, make sure you're checking the geo tags. Don't check suspicious links. For me, someone could send something like 50% off at Sephora. Let's say I click on that. They can get into the GPS on your phone. So don't click any suspicious links. Don't share your kids' school or pictures of them with their school logos. I think with kids, it's teaching them situational awareness as well. My dad did a lot of forensics because he was a police surgeon in New York, which is something that's kind of weird that they have there. So I grew up with cases at home, and I would sneak at them and look at them. When I was a kid,

it was the 80s, and that was the height of the kidnapping panic. That was just a big part of 80s conversation. I remember my father being out with me, and I was little, three or four, and a guy would come in, and my dad would go, tell me, and I'd go, white male, approximately 30 to 40, about six but tall, the scar over the eyebrow. He'd be like, here's some jelly beans. Good job. He did that with me. That's kind of legendary and also sounds like would have been right up my alley as a kid. I think it's obviously served you in your life. Yeah, but I mean, you've got to teach your kids that, right? Because a lot of times if something happens, any bit of details helps us with the investigations. This is really important. So if somebody is sending you threats online, what you really need to do

is Grey Rock. Don't respond because if you respond with kindness, you're not going to make them go way they may go on one harder, and if you're aggressive, that may exacerbate things. So what you really want to do is just gray rocket, hope that they get bored and eventually move on, which sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Definitely keep all the threats coming to you, but do not interact back. That is literally the worst thing that you could do. One of the things that I'm sorry to call out law enforcement yet again, but we need to hold them accountable. One of the things that I'm seeing is that people will come in when they're trying to file a complaint about what's happening to them, and the officer pretends to, like, write it down.

You need an actual crime report with a number. That crime report is a documentation that you need to potentially get the restraining order, which is the next level. So if you go in and you're not being heard, you can ask for the watch captain. That's their job. Definitely make sure to get that documentation. It's really important to have that documentation because law enforcement is way more likely to work with you. Definitely come with everything in order.

One of the other things that I wish law enforcement agencies had was forensic psych to do evaluations because that's who understands the risk assessment. They can never like fully predict, but they are able to sort of understand when there's a higher propensity towards violence or what the individual may do next. If people have access, I love forensic psychologists evaluating if you can get them involved. That is something that we do at my company. It can just be so informational and such a helpful tool. And again, I wish that law enforcement paid to have them on staff to like red flags. and people who are really at risk. We always go justice.

They can't see me, but I'm making your quotes. Like, I don't even know what that is. What is justice? And we never really talk about healing. And I really want to change that conversation because even after getting incarceration, which I guess is justice, I'm not any safer now,

it's the healing component. I'm still a person, and some days I'm not okay. I have really good days where I'm high functioning, and things are going great. And I have some days where I'm just like, holy shit, so much was taken from me. I look at my old photos.

I'm never going to be that person again. I mean, I'll do new things and my life has meaning and my life has beauty, but that person who I was and that trajectory that I was on, I cannot be that anymore. And that's really hard. I had all these accomplishments that's so far down the Google search, no one knows. It's really hard to lose your identity. I have 8 million medical issues that directly correlate with what's happening to me.

I know Ana does a lot of the survivors that I talk to. We all just check in and like, how's your stomach? Because we're all unwell. I do the work that I do because for me, it can't all be for nothing. I try so hard to be the person that I needed when I needed them. And I hope that I'm successful in doing that, like I'm really trying. I just need people to know, even when you're this many years in, even when you've had the felony stalking charge, which again, what I got was really rare.

Even when you have all those things, there's still some days that are just really, really hard and to give yourself grace and to just do whatever it takes for you to heal. That can look differently for all of us. What healing is, our needs are all. all so different. The crime is not the same. Our individual needs are not the same. And it's just to really meet people where they are. If you have a loved one that this is happening to, you may not have the answers, but being present is so meaningful because stalkers so frequently try to isolate you. They make it sound like they'll threaten your loved ones, so you avoid them. When you're being

stopped, it's really important to find your community. There's a really cool nonprofit that I'm friends with called Stop Stocking Us, and they've just started a support group. That's a great thing that I really believe in. We live in a culture right now where we're telling everybody to put yourself out there, be a podcaster, be an influencer, be on YouTube, which is amazing, but we're not doing anything to protect people. So we're living in this very bizarre time where we're putting ourselves out there, but we just have to do better by people. This story I'm working on for season 20, this woman has been cyber-stalking and harassing and catfishing people for 18 years now, and we're working with a bunch of her victims. The cops are just like, yeah, it's cyber-stalking, but there's

nothing really we can do about it. And I'm just like, they don't even understand federal law. Half of these cops that I've met that work in dual task force barely even know how the internet works. And they're working in cyber crimes. And I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but it's very disheartening. Exactly right. So that's part of what the grant that we're getting is going to go for tech stuff, which is super important. Typically, there are less than 20 federal stocking cases per year because that's just not something that the FBI is really focused on right now. I had FBI and Secret Service on my case and then eventually just got kicked down to Los Angeles. And if I had gotten federal, I could have gotten like 25 years for the same situation. I was going to do the FBI

Citizens Academy anyway and I got Jake to do it with me. But literally the reason why I did it was so that I can make those relationships that I could have this conversation. Right now, they're really focused on like Russian and Chinese interference, which is totally valid. But we know for all these cyber crimes, we need this help. A lot of times what happens is the multi-jurisdictions, they just kick it to the other one. They go, oh, didn't happen over here, kick it over there. And then they don't extradite when it's a misdemeanor, which a lot of these crimes are. It's really hard to like get up to a felony level with stalking. People always ask me about legislation. There's some things coming. I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I am working with a politician. So there is something coming.

What do you think is the most common misconception that people have about stalking victims that stands out to you as a survivor? There's a lot. Okay, so I work with so many survivors that are former intimate partner and they have like a different thing than those of us that are stranger acquaintances do. A lot of times they have the guilt. I invited this person into my life. I brought this person around my children. I always want to say to them, you're already going through the hardest thing. Don't make it harder on yourself. and if your friend have this situation, you wouldn't blame them. So give yourself that grace.

When we're talking about misconceptions, I always use this analogy and I think it's really accurate. Imagine you saw a dog. It's a cute dog. And you pet the cute dog. You didn't know the dog had rabies. The dog is sick. That's when it's a form of a partner. Like you just were being a kind, loving person who dated somebody or had a relationship

with someone. There's nothing that you did. Just like me opening an art gallery. I didn't do anything. And a lot of times we blame ourselves. I can't tell you how many times from law enforcement to friends or people just telling me to tone myself down. And I would be like, Ivanka is so conventional looking.

It has nothing to do with my hair color choice why this is happening to me. And the other thing, too, is because it's reported with celebrities so often, people think it only happens as celebrities, the 15 million people, and it's more than 15, that's just what reported, they're not all celebrities. Yes, it does happen often as celebrities. That's just who gets the media coverage. It's literally everybody. I don't even know how many survivors.

I work with, but it's a lot. When I started working with survivors, I started having really lovely friendships. And at first, I was like, are these lovely friendships? Is it because we're bonded with our shared trauma? And I thought, no, you know what? That's doing a disservice. It's not just the trauma. All these people are fierce. My theory, which Debbie Riddle has a similar thing. So we both were seeing eye to eye on this with the sparkle, right? Which is why we dressed wearing sparkles for January for Stocking Awareness Month. I call it extra sparkly theory, which is where all these people that I was interacting with all these victim survivors. They're really charismatic. They're very likable.

They're really talented at their chosen feel. They're just sparkly people. That's why a lot of these crime shows, people say, so-and-so could light up the world with their smile. But there is something to it. And I think it's because these predators want to obtain, possess, and control all of which they're not, because they're not shit. They're drawn to these charismatic, wonderful people. But something really does happen to everybody. It's from the meek-church-mouse personality to the overtop person.

Like, it could happen to anyone. And that's why we have to do better because it is everybody. This is a crime that transcends gender, sexuality, socioeconomic background, race, religion. Disproportionately, it's more women, but it is something that happens to everybody. And yet the one commonality is that we don't get the help that we need. I am really honored to have the opportunity to speak with you and to be able to share your story with our audience. I just think you're absolutely brilliant. and I am so thankful that Jake introduced me to you

and informed me about all the incredible work you're doing. And again, I just feel like it's such kismet that we are closing out this season with you. I'm really easy to access. People can always write me if they have questions. I do my best. I can't always get back to everybody all the time, but I really do try if people have questions or need resources.

Again, thank you for having me. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production. Created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review,

or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.