Invisible Threats
“Nowhere Feels Safe”
Stalking is a common but often misunderstood tactic used in domestic violence. While physical abuse may stop after separation, stalking frequently continues - or escalates - as a form of post-relationship control. It can involve repeated unwanted contact, monitoring, threats, manipulation through children or legal systems, and both online and offline surveillance. For many survivors, it’s not just fear of being hurt; it’s the deep, ongoing terror of being watched, followed, or targeted with no clear way to escape.
"Invisible Threats" addresses the realities of stalking in the context of domestic violence, where the perpetrator is often a former or current intimate partner. We outline the unique dynamics of coercive control, how stalking intersects with technology, housing, child custody, and community perception - and why it often goes unrecognized or minimized by systems meant to protect survivors.
This report provides practical tools for service providers, advocates, and survivors to identify stalking early, validate survivor experiences, and create safety plans that respond to the persistent, boundary-crossing nature of this harm. It includes strategies for safety planning with survivors who do not wish to report, guidance on documentation and evidence-gathering, and considerations for working with marginalized communities disproportionately impacted by underreporting and systemic bias.
By shifting the focus from "fixing the victim’s behavior" to recognizing the patterns and risks posed by stalkers, this guide calls for stronger, survivor-centered responses across justice, housing, mental health, and social services.
Stalking is not about obsession — it’s about control. And until we treat it with the seriousness it deserves, survivors will continue to live with fear long after the relationship ends.
This report is intended for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal advice. If you believe you are being stalked or are in immediate danger, contact your local police or emergency services. For legal guidance or protection options, consult a qualified lawyer or legal advocate in your area.
What is stalking?
In Alberta, the Protection Against Family Violence Act defines stalking (also called criminal harassment) as:
“repeated conduct by a person, without lawful excuse or authority, that the person knows or reasonably ought to know constitutes harassment of a family member and causes a family member to fear for a family member’s personal safety.”
This effectively means repeated actions by a person where that person knows or should know that their actions cause fear. When the definition says “repeated conduct”, there are specific actions classified for stalking:
“a) following a family member or anyone known to the family member from place to place,
b) communicating directly or indirectly with or contacting a family member or anyone known to the family member,
c) being present at or watching any place where a family member, or anyone known to the family member, resides, works, carries on business or is present or likely to be present,
d) engaging in threatening conduct directed at a family member or anyone known to the family member, and
e) any other behaviour that a judge considers to be stalking.”
The types of conduct in laymen’s terms:
a) repeated following
b) repeated communication
c) watching a dwelling/residence
d) threats
How do we identify if someone is being stalked?
Disclaimer: this list is designed for individuals to help see if they’re possibly being stalked, and for advocates and support workers. This is not to determine legality of stalking.
Stalking often isn’t identified by using the term “stalking” - we often hear being describe the behaviours and the impacts on their lives. SPARC (Stalking Prevention, Awareness, and Resource Center) outlines four core areas to help identify if stalking is occurring: surveillance, intimidation, life invasion, and interference.
We as professionals can help identify stalking through situational factors like:
seriousness of the behavior
victims' psychological response
relationship between the victim and the offender
the advice that the victim receives from others regarding impacts on victims.
Initial screening questions to see if someone may be being stalked include:
Are they following you, watching you, showing up unexpectedly, or communicating with you in ways that seem obsessive or make you concerned for your safety?
Have they repeatedly initiated unwanted contact with you (for example, repeated phone calls, texts, messages, emails, gifts, etc. or through third parties)?
Have they threatened you or done other things to intimidate you? What have they done that has frightened or alarmed you?
Have they significantly and directly interfered with your life? Have they assaulted you while stalking, harassing, or threatening you? Have they forcibly kept you from leaving or held you against your will, caused you to have a serious accident, physically assaulted your friends or family members, or seriously attacked you in other ways?
Surveillance:
Following
Watching
Waiting
Showing up
Tracking software
Obtaining information
Proxy stalking
Life Invasion:
Unwanted contact
Phone calls
Property invasion
Public humiliation
Harassing friends/family
Sending unwanted gifts or leaving items for you to find
Interference:
Financial and work sabotage
Ruining reputation
Custody interference
Keep from leaving
Road rage
Attach family/friends
Physical/sexual attack
Intimidation:
Threats
Property damage
Forced confrontation
Threaten or actually harm self
Threats to victim about harming others
Statistics
About 8% of women and 5% of men aged 15 and older have reported being stalked within the past five years, highlighting that stalking is a widespread and deeply underrecognized issue. While both men and women can experience stalking, the burden disproportionately falls on women, who make up 62% of all victims. Stalking is most prevalent among younger people, with nearly half (48%) of victims between the ages of 15 and 34. This points to a significant risk during adolescence and early adulthood—times when many individuals are forming relationships, pursuing education, or navigating early careers.
Stalkers are more likely to be male and are frequently known to the victim, whether as former or current intimate partners, acquaintances, co-workers, or peers. This familiarity can make the stalking more psychologically damaging and difficult to report, as victims may feel trapped by shared social circles, children, or housing.
Stalking doesn't only affect individuals in personal relationships
Stalking also impacts professionals. Research shows that approximately 7% of counsellors have experienced stalking by a client. Those at higher risk often work in areas involving forensic treatment, substance use, sexual abuse, or sexuality-related issues, where complex power dynamics, boundary testing, and emotional intensity are more likely to arise. These types of therapeutic contexts may involve clients with unresolved trauma, attachment disruptions, or histories of manipulation and control, increasing the risk of boundary violations.
Stalking of counsellors can include repeated unwanted contact, boundary-pushing behaviors, and surveillance, which may cause serious distress, fear, or professional disruption. Clinicians and organizations need to prioritize staff safety, establish clear boundaries, and implement response protocols when warning signs of stalking emerge within professional relationships. It also speaks to the importance of trauma-informed supervision and debriefing practices to support staff who may be navigating risk while continuing to provide care.
Stalking Intersecting with Injury
While less than 1% of stalking cases result in physical injury to the victim, the psychological toll can be significant - the potential for escalation should not be underestimated. The risk of violence increases substantially when stalking is part of an ongoing pattern of family violence. Between 1997 and 2009, criminal harassment was the precipitating factor in 68 homicides across Canada - averaging five stalking-related homicides per year. This data makes clear that while many stalking cases may not end in physical violence, some do escalate to fatal outcomes. In these cases, stalking is not a standalone behavior but a continuation of coercive control that can intensify.
Gendered patterns also emerge: female victims are almost twice as likely to be stalked by a current or former intimate partner, while male victims are more often stalked by a casual acquaintance. Current spouses are nearly twice as likely to experience physical assault, whereas stalking and threats are far more common among ex-spouses, underscoring the risk that persists after a relationship ends.
Another key pattern is the relationship between familiarity and stalking intensity: the more the stalker knows the victim, the more likely they are to use multiple methods of harassment - such as showing up uninvited, sending messages, using third parties (proxies), or constant surveillance. In contrast, victims of stranger-stalking are more often targeted through a single method, such as following or unwanted contact. This layered, persistent nature of stalking by known individuals makes it especially dangerous and emotionally destabilizing, particularly when the legal system fails to recognize the pattern until it escalates.
How long does stalking last?
In Alberta, stalking presents with a wide range of durations and intensities - shaped heavily by the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator. Among all reported stalking cases, 21% of individuals experienced stalking that persisted for over a year, while 29% reported stalking that lasted between one and six months. Interestingly, 31% of male victims reported that the stalking ended within one week, suggesting a higher likelihood of short-term incidents when men are the targets, possibly reflecting different patterns of reporting or types of relationships with their stalker.
However, the situation becomes more complex - and more dangerous - when the stalker has an intimate history with the victim. In Alberta, 61% of those stalked by a former spouse reported the stalking continued for over a year. For former dating partners, 26% experienced stalking for more than a year. These prolonged campaigns of harassment are often part of ongoing coercive control that doesn’t end with separation, especially when children, shared housing, or legal proceedings remain in place.
For those stalked by non-intimate individuals - such as co-workers, casual acquaintances, or people only known by sight - about 30% reported that the stalking lasted between one and six months. Stranger-stalking, while often viewed as the most dangerous in media portrayals, typically presents as more brief and less complex: 41% of people stalked by a stranger in Alberta said the behavior lasted less than one week.
Physical violence is significantly more likely when stalking occurs within intimate relationships. In Alberta, 36% of those stalked by a current partner and 34% stalked by a former partner reported being physically attacked or grabbed by their stalker. In comparison, only 13% of those stalked by a non-intimate person reported being physically assaulted. These statistics underscore the heightened risk faced by survivors of domestic violence when stalking is used as a tactic of post-separation abuse. The combination of emotional trauma, sustained surveillance, and physical risk reinforces the need for targeted, trauma-informed safety planning and stronger intervention from both legal and community-based systems in Alberta.
Risk factors:
Certain risk factors significantly increase the likelihood that stalking may escalate into lethal violence. One key indicator is the escalation of stalking behaviors - when contact becomes more frequent, intense, or shifts from indirect surveillance to direct confrontation or aggression. Upcoming significant dates, such as anniversaries, custody hearings, or separation milestones, can trigger an increase in risk, particularly if the perpetrator perceives a loss of control. Specific and detailed threats are another major red flag, especially when they involve naming a time, place, or method of harm, and when combined with a stalker's ability to follow through on those threats—such as knowing the survivor’s schedule, accessing restricted areas, or having financial resources to travel. Perhaps most critically, access to firearms dramatically increases the potential for lethal outcomes. When these factors are present, particularly in combination, the risk to the survivor rises substantially and calls for immediate safety planning, professional intervention, and potentially legal protective measures.
What do police need?
If you’re thinking about reporting to police, or you’re just starting your journey of recognizing some problematic signs of stalking, here’s what you need to know.
The police need as much evidence as possible. Try to keep the following:
Any relevant details that you know about the person. For example:
Do they have a gun?
Do they have a criminal record?
Is there a court order for them to have no contact against you?
How do you know them, and how long have you known them?
Written records will also be important. Details about every interaction, any notes about the context of incidents, and types of behaviours are critical. Ask your friends, coworkers, and neighbours to keep records as well. Add all of the details you can about the context and history - For example, sending roses on Valentine’s day seems romantic, however to someone who has been abused and has repeatedly attempted to keep their location secret, the message of the roses is that they cannot escape the stalker; Leaving beer bottle caps when your sober-versary is coming up when they know the affects of seeing alcohol paraphernalia will make it difficult for you to stay sober.
Without these details of the context, stalking behaviours may be interpreted by others as caring behaviours. Having the explanation to explain why you’re fearful is critical for law enforcement.
SPARC has a table to keep documentation organized you can use:
Safety Planning
Considerations:
Safety planning is a critical process in supporting individuals who are experiencing stalking, particularly within the context of domestic violence. However, safety plans must be more than generic checklists - they need to be carefully tailored to the survivor’s life circumstances, including their living situation, cultural background, financial stability, caregiving responsibilities, and level of access to support.
Unique risk factors such as the perpetrator’s proximity, history of violence, mental health concerns, or access to weapons must also be considered. Survivors often face systemic barriers, such as fear of not being believed, lack of housing options, immigration status, or mistrust of law enforcement, which can limit their ability to follow through on traditional safety recommendations. In today’s digital world, technology adds another layer of complexity: stalkers may use GPS, spyware, social media, or shared accounts to monitor and control.
A strong safety plan must account for these realities, offering flexible, realistic strategies that prioritize survivor autonomy and adjust as circumstances shift. It is not about fixing the survivor’s behavior—it’s about creating space for safety, dignity, and choice in an unsafe situation.
An effective safety plan requires survivors to trust their instincts - if something feels off, it likely is. Many survivors can sense when risk is escalating, even if they can’t always explain why. These instincts are valuable and should be treated as critical data when planning next steps.
A safety plan should not be static. It needs to evolve as situations change: whether that’s a new address, a change in the stalker’s behavior, a court date approaching, or a shift in technology use. Survivors are encouraged to think ahead about what might happen next and anticipate how the stalker may react to changes such as reduced contact, increased boundaries, or involvement of authorities.
While it's important to prioritize safety, it’s equally important to balance that need with the right to live freely. Survivors shouldn’t have to disappear to stay safe. A good safety plan helps people stay as connected, visible, and independent as they want to be without compromising their well-being. Ultimately, safety planning is about supporting survivors in making informed, empowered decisions that work for their unique lives; Not forcing them into one-size-fits-all solutions.
When safety planning with someone experiencing stalking, it’s essential to emphasize that they should only take actions that feel safe and realistic for them. While general strategies can be helpful, they’re not one-size-fits-all—and pushing a survivor into a safety measure that increases risk or anxiety can do more harm than good.
For example, ceasing all communication with the stalker is often recommended, but may not be safe in situations involving shared parenting, legal proceedings, or escalation risk. Keeping a detailed log of every incident—dates, times, behaviors, witnesses—can be valuable for building a case or tracking patterns, but should only be done if it can be stored safely. Some survivors choose to vary their routines periodically to make tracking more difficult, such as changing routes to work or adjusting schedules, though this may not always be possible due to job demands or caregiving responsibilities. Survivors may also choose to inform trusted people in their life—friends, family, coworkers, supervisors—about the situation and discuss what they can do if the stalker reaches out to them. Finally, while seeking a protective order can be a useful legal step, it may also escalate the stalker’s behavior in some cases, so this decision should be made carefully with support.
At the core of all these strategies is this truth: the survivor is the expert in their own safety. Planning must center their reality, their options, and their comfort—not assumptions or pressure to “do the right thing.”
Workplace Safety:
When navigating stalking, especially when it involves public spaces like your workplace or your child’s school, it’s important to involve others in your safety plan. If it feels safe to do so, give a photo of the stalker to your employer, building security, and anyone who might be contacted by the person. They need to know what the stalker looks like and how they might try to reach you. You may also consider adjusting your work hours, having a trusted colleague walk you to your car, and asking supervisors to keep records of any sightings or contact attempts at your workplace. If you have a protective order or other court order(s), keep a copy with you at all times, and provide a copy to your supervisor. Let your workplace know not to share your personal information, and ask about policies that can help - like screening calls, intercepting unwanted deliveries, or flagging your name in building access systems.
Don’t keep this private if it puts you at risk. Talk to your coworkers, your manager, your child’s school or daycare. If a non-custodial parent is stalking you or your child, provide any legal orders that restrict contact, and make sure they understand the boundaries and risks. If the stalker is a stranger, provide a full description, vehicle details, and license plate number if you have them. Lastly, loop in your friends and family. Ask them to take the situation seriously, log any contact, and let you know if the stalker reaches out.
The more informed your circle is, the harder it is for the stalker to isolate or surprise you. Sharing this information isn’t overreacting—it’s a proactive, protective step toward reclaiming control and safety.
Household safety:
If you’re being stalked, enhancing your home safety is a key part of your overall safety plan. Where possible, inform trusted neighbours about the situation and provide them with a photo or description of the stalker and their vehicle, so they can watch for suspicious activity and notify you or authorities if needed.
It’s also important to identify escape routes in your home - know how you’d leave quickly if you had to. Keep an emergency bag packed and stored somewhere easily accessible, ideally outside the home or with someone you trust. Change your locks, especially if the stalker is a former partner with access, and install or upgrade a home security system, including deadbolts, window locks, and motion detectors. Even simple measures like keeping windows and doors locked at all times can help reinforce boundaries. Consider asking the police to assist with a home security check; many departments offer this service to assess vulnerabilities and recommend improvements.
Photograph and document any property damage immediately, as it may be evidence of escalating behavior. Investing in tools like security cameras or alarm systems can offer both protection and peace of mind, but your safety plan should always match what’s realistic and sustainable for your situation. These steps aren’t about living in fear—they’re about creating space to live with greater safety and control.
Technological Safety:
Digital safety is just as important as physical safety when it comes to stalking. Stalkers may use technology to monitor your movements, access your personal data, or manipulate your online presence. It’s critical to take proactive steps to protect yourself.
Update your passwords regularly and choose ones that are difficult to guess. Just as importantly, change your security questions and answers, especially if the stalker knows personal details like your mother’s maiden name or your pet’s name. Disable location sharing on apps and social media, and check your phone settings to ensure you're not unintentionally sharing your whereabouts. It’s a good idea to search your name online to see if any private information has been posted without your consent. If you find anything, contact the website immediately to request its removal.
Keep your personal details private - only provide your Social Insurance Number when legally required, like for banking or tax purposes. If you suspect you're being tracked in real life, consider using a tracking detection app or visit a professional to check for devices placed on your car or in your belongings. For Apple users, visit the Apple Store to confirm your Apple ID is secure and ensure no one else has access to your account.
If someone else had access to your home Wi-Fi or devices, change your Wi-Fi admin password to prevent remote surveillance. These steps can’t guarantee safety—but they reduce opportunities for control and create space for you to reclaim digital autonomy.
Stalking is not about obsession or affection—it’s about power, control, and fear. It can follow survivors into every corner of their lives: their homes, workplaces, relationships, and devices. And while it often goes unnoticed or minimized by others, its impact is very real and deeply personal.
Safety planning for stalking must be flexible, realistic, and survivor-centered. Every decision must balance risk, access to support, and the survivor’s right to live freely. Some people can involve police, others can’t. Some can cut off contact entirely, others are parenting with their stalker. Every situation is valid. What matters most is that survivors are supported, not judged, and empowered to make the choices that work for them.
If you're supporting someone who is being stalked: believe them. Don’t push, fix, or shame; Listen, validate, and offer options. If you are being stalked, know this: you are not imagining it, you are not overreacting, and you are not alone. You deserve safety, support, and a life without surveillance or fear.
Stalking is serious. Let’s treat it that way.
References
Cao L, Kevin Wang SY. Correlates of stalking victimization in Canada: A model of social support and comorbidity. Int J Law Crime Justice. 2020 Dec;63:100437. doi: 10.1016/j.ijlcj.2020.100437
Government of Canada, Department of Justice, Electronic Communications. (2021, December 8). Department of Justice - a handbook for police and crown prosecutors on criminal harassment.
Identifying Stalking: SLII Strategies. (n.d.). https://www.stalkingawareness.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Identifying-Stalking-as-SLII-Strategies.pdf
Lethality Risk Factors Series: Stalking - DV RISC. (2024, March 4). DV RISC. https://dvrisc.org/resource/lethality-risk-factors-series-stalking/