America's Forgotten Anti-Gangstalking Law: USC 18 Section 241

Many of Medawar's fellow bloggers are calling for laws in the USA, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom against "gangstalking" and "proxy stalking" which could both collectively be called organized stalking. And certainly in Canada and Australia, some legislative action is imperative. But it's long been Medawar's view that in the United Kingdom (both England and Scotland; unlike the Berlin Wall, Hadrian's Wall has never fallen in the legal sense) all forms of organized stalking were breaking several laws already and the problem was recognition of that fact by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Crown Prosecution Service and action by the police.

In the USA, there already is a highly specific law, under which it is pretty well impossible for any two or more persons to carry out a stalking campaign against a citizen, without conspiring to deny that citizen their legal and constitutional rights. Under USC18 section 241, this is an offence normally punishable by a fine and/or up to ten years imprisonment. But if the conspiracy leads to a loss of life, and the usual qualifications of premeditated murder are not specified (because murder is not a Federal offence and would be dealt with under county or state law if it had happened) then the penalty can be life imprisonment, or death.

So, if somebody is harassed and deprived of their legal and constitutional rights to the point where they commit suicide, or become ill and expire as some other consequence of the conspiracy to deny them their rights, then a capital crime has been committed. For example: if a conspiracy to harass a citizen restricted his ability to earn money to keep himself properly fed and housed and he were to die as a result of living rough, the conspirators have committed a capital crime, just as they would have done had they conspired to prevent him receiving proper medical treatment for an illness. Or, if they conspired to restrict his freedom of movement and he was unable to flee a natural disaster, they would have committed a capital crime that could be investigated by Federal Agents and tried in a Federal Court.

The possibility of life imprisonment or capital punishment also applies if the citizen is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or there is an intent to sexually assault, or an attempt to kill.

These are extreme examples to demonstrate the circumstances in which organized stalking is a capital crime under US Federal Law. But not so extreme that there are no stalking groups currently risking such a charge. In fact, the threat and fact of sexual assault is pretty common.

In the less extreme case, whereby a citizen is not harried to his death, merely prevented from living the normal life of an American citizen, it is still a felony, punishable by a longer prison term than many burglaries, assaults and contraband offences. And nearly ALL stalking activity involving two or more persons acting together, commits this felony.

Even if a lone stalker enlists the help of another for a single part of his stalking campaign against a citizen, a conspiracy to deny that citizen his rights has probably taken place.

The relevant legal text is a lot shorter than this post and is reproduced, below.

       If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or
  intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth,
  Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any
  right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of
  the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;
  or
    If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the
  premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free
  exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured -
    They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
  ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in
  violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an
  attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit
  aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined
  under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life,
  or both, or may be sentenced to death.

The second paragraph makes it obvious that the Congress had the Ku Klux Klan very much in mind when drafting this law; anyone who thinks that they are stalking in a more noble cause, should think again: if you resort to the Klan's methods, your cause is incapable of nobility and you fully deserve to be tarred with precisely the same brush. It is legally impossible to stalk in a good cause. This title is not an anti-racism law: it is a law against denying a citizen his constitutional and legal rights on any pretext whatsoever.

Update:
Four police officers in New Haven, Connecticut, have been indicted and arrested under this very law.

Further update:
Judge, Sheriff and Prosecutor from Mingo County, West Virginia, all jailed under this law and a few others. See also this link.

Update 5/6/2017: Most readers of this post will be interested in this newer post, which contains a link to a new report by the UK's Inspectorate of Constabulary and the Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate, into stalking and the inadequate response of police and prosecutors to it. There is also a research document published alongside the report, which is of relevance to stalking in whichever country it occurs.

Update 15/7/2020: see new post for pretty conclusive proof that organised stalking can happen and that it can lead to Federal charges.

Stalked

This link is to a blog by a person in the UK who is being persistently stalked, apparently by a "registered nurse". (As of May 2020 this link no longer works. The article is being left up because it shows ways in which stalking or "gaslighting" behaviour can be prosecuted.))

It would be very helpful to know whether this means a "State Registered Nurse" or a "Registered Mental Nurse". The element of pyschological warfare rather suggests the latter. The stalker appears to have secured a number of minor public positions, such as school governor. It is by no means outside Medawar's experience for a psychopath to secure as many such positions as he or she possibly could. Particularly if "psychopath" further translates to "pathological liar."

Too many stalking victims try in vain to get the police to act "against the stalking". Due largely to problems with definitions, the law is less than helpful here.

However:
If the stalker has given any clue at all, or made any suggestion at all, as to what the victim is supposed to do to make the stalking stop, or stop it getting worse, no matter how large or small this requirement may be, the stalking becomes a component of blackmail, or conspiracy to blackmail if the stalker has even one accomplice or supporter. As soon as a stalking victim can tell an English or Welsh policeman that the stalking is intended to force them to perform an unwanted action that would represent a loss of material or rights on their part, then the stalking victim can make a complaint of blackmail and the police have both duty and powers to act.

The law of blackmail in England and Wales is not defined as an attempt to obtain money or goods: it is defined as an attempt to force a loss upon the victim. The courts have accepted that "loss" can include interference with the right to carry out normal activities.

Medawar would suggest that being forced to install a level of security not considered normal or necessary by one's neighbours, is a material loss for starters.

The stalker can also be prosecuted for inflicting grievous or actual psychological harm. Actual psychological harm is anything you need medical treatment for, grievous psychological harm is usually defined as anything that requires the victim to stay in hospital for treatment.

It is also an act of criminal trespass if the stalker, from the victim's property or any adjoining property, prevents the victim from doing anything on the victim's own property which the victim has a legal right to do.

Anyone in a similar predicament might usefully remind their local police of these three things. Because even if the victim has not yet required psychiatric treatment, if the stalking is designed to bring this situation about, it is a wilful attempt to cause grievous psychological harm -and that's just as much an arrestable offence as swinging a hammer at someone's head.

Sentences for blackmail tend to be severe, especially when the blackmail involves physical intimidation. Sentences for causing actual bodily harm can range up to seven years, those for causing grievous bodily harm can be longer still.

Any criminal conviction for offences of this nature could disbar the stalker from being a school governor, or even from having contact with children. It is also likely that the relevant Royal College would strike the stalker off from ever practicing as a nurse.

Stalkers and Malware

Many "phishing" and other scam e-mails are sent from hijacked e-mail accounts, using lists of e-mail addresses found on computers by infecting malware. Usually, these are friends and contacts of the account holder, so they may be people who'd be sympathetic if he got into difficulties and needed money.

But what happens if such malware infects a computer owned by a stalker?

Well, the malware searches for lists of e-mails and personal details, and sends scam e-mails to them, and passes any other contact details to cold-calling scammer's call centres, as usual. Except these are not the computer-owner's friends and contacts: they are the people he's been stalking and obssessively gathering information on: see below for an example.

-- On Sat, 17/12/11, PHILIP BEAVEN <philbeaven@btinternet.com> wrote:

From: PHILIP BEAVEN <philbeaven@btinternet.com>
Subject: My Sad Trip...Philip Beaven
To: philbeaven@btinternet.com
Date: Saturday, 17 December, 2011, 9:34

I really hope you get this fast. I could not inform anyone about my trip, because it was impromptu. I had to be in Madrid Spain for a program. The program was successful, but my journey has turned sour. I misplaced my wallet on my way back to my hotel after I went for sight seeing. The wallet contained all the valuables I had. Now, my passport is in custody of the hotel management pending when I make payment.

I am sorry if i am inconveniencing you, but i have only very few people to run to now. i will be indeed very grateful if i can get a loan of 2,605 Eur from you. this will enable me sort my hotel bills and get my sorry self back home. I will really appreciate whatever you can afford in assisting me with. I promise to refund it in full as soon as I return. let me know if you can be of any assistance. Please, let me know soonest. Thanks so much.

Phil


Normally, one is sympathetic to someone whose computer is hijacked in this way and in whose name, friends and family get reams of malicious spam.

But in this case, Mr Beaven seems to have been hoarding details of people who were not friends, family or contacts: they are people he hounds.
Including the unfortunate stained glass artist from Ipswich who Mr Beaven tried to out, falsely, as "Medawar".
The e-mail lacks the profanity and hate-filled abuse that Medawar normally expects from Mr Beaven, which is partly how it was spotted as a scam.

Stalkers and Snake Oil

Rhys Morgan, a young man with a serious illness who decided to expose some of the cranks and con-artists peddling harmful alternative "cures" for his condition, is beginning to experience the early stages of an organised stalking campaign.

This may get worse, but he may also find that many of the threats are empty ones. If someone is really going to sue, they get a properly registered solicitor to send a letter. Threatening e-mails have no legal force whatever, and the person sending them is almost certainly breaking the law and/or professional codes of conduct.

The way to tackle this kind of thing, is to keep striking at the head of the snake (or the snake-oil salesman) and not to allow skanks hired by the snake oil salesman to divert attention from the con.

The people doing this are in the United States, they are almost certainly breaking Federal Laws and are exposing themselves to massive civil liabilities from people they have sold harmful substances to on the basis of false promises. They have a great deal more to lose from a court battle that Rhys Morgan has, so what they are doing is lay down a barrage of threats of legal action, as well as threats of a more direct nature (sending him Google Earth images of his home, for example) precisely in order to keep the matter out of court.

The stalker's next move will be to use a campaign of lies to induce individuals to initiate some kind of physical harassment against Rhys and his family. These lies may be completely unconnected to Rhys's campaign, and probably won't be based on even a grain of truth. At which point, he must contact the police, very firmly and preferably with a solicitor in tow, and make it plain that there is a criminal smear campaign against him, and that it is taking place in order to protect a large scale consumer fraud.

The ACPO advice, which leads many police forces into abject failure on stalking cases in particular, is effectively to blame the victim for provoking "anti-social behaviour" from conveniently unidentified local "kids". (The Data Protection act supposedly (but not actually) makes it illegal for the police to tell the victim who they think it might be!)

It is very important to squash this suggestion from the outset and every single time it is subsequently deployed, because a succession of police officers will be involved, and it only takes one of them to succeed in making this suggestion without challenge, for it to go on the file and become the official explanation for any crimes committed against Rhys and his family. The above advice may sound hostile to the police, but it's necessary to recognise that many of their guidelines are issued precisely in order to limit the number of cases they get involved with. They will help, providing that the victim can ensure the case is recorded and presented in a way that triggers investigation and solution, rather than pallative or evasive measures preferred by the more political levels of the criminal justice system.

If threatening e-mails originate from the USA, this is where to report them.

Meredith Kercher: Evading the Obvious Explanation

Now that there's nothing about the Meredith Kercher case which would be defined as sub judice under English Law (no-one facing an unresolved criminal charge) it may last be safe to point out a painfully obvious probability, and pose the one question which Italian Police and Prosecutors notably failed to ask:

In the two or three months before Miss Kercher was murdered in the cottage she shared with Miss Knox, did anyone in Northern Italy (not necessarily Perugia itself), systematically research the financial means of families of foreign students studying or due to study in Perugia? The Knox family in particular, but it wouldn't be confined to them, at least not in the early phases. Someone would have found out the names of foreign students, found out where they came from, then narrowed their sights a bit onto those who seemed to come from prosperous communities. These would have been researched a bit more deeply, until a shortlist was drawn up, of students with caring families who could afford a ransom, but could not afford (and would not know how to hire) a small army of ruthless mercenaries instead.

The Kerchers are from Surrey, which might excite interest, but there's a bit of a financial gulf between St George's Hill and Coulsden, and once the list-maker discovered the Kerchers came from the latter, Meredith might have been struck from the list.

Eventually, such lists have one name on it, and, with hindsight, Amanda Knox probably struck the ideal balance between wealth and vulnerability, so the name would have been hers. The name would be passed to someone more local, who'd played no part in researching the list, and who was definitively expendable -and they would have to be known to organized crime. The expendable local would have cased the joint, more competently or less, and when he observed a window of opportunity, he would have summoned a small group of specialists, whom he would have led to, and into, the property.

Both Meredith and Amanda have the same general description: English-speaking ,young, female, long brown hair. Miss Knox protests that until she was arrested, she'd never been in the same place as Rudy Guede before, and this would imply that Mr Guede would not have been a reliable authority on the crucial matter of which English-speaking young woman with long brown hair was which.

Fairly quickly, the specialists and their expendable local would have realized that something wasn't stacking up. Almost certainly, the specialists would have realized this long before the expendable local was prepared to admit it. Faced with a choice between total disaster and trying to get a ransom for a different young woman, they would have chosen the latter, and tried, in a few minutes, to establish equivalent information to everything which the researcher had supplied for Amanda after a month's work. That would account for the huge number of injuries on Meredith's body: sexual assault and torture at first, giving way to frustrated psychopathic rage when her answers, or the lack of them, signalled the end of their perceived opportunity for gain. This would have also served to impress Mr Guede with the urgent need not to implicate or identify the specialists in any way. Which he's managed not to do.

A bloody handprint links Mr Guede to the murder scene, but there are also fingerprints for several other persons, none of whom Italian Police have been able to (have tried to?) identify.
Tne unambiguous bloody hand-print emphasizes Mr Guede's expandability.

The above is not a flight of fancy, but a well-informed description of one of the most famous and lucrative industries of Northern Italy, one which every level of Italian officialdom, politics and the judiciary, has always preferred to pretend doesn't exist. Kidnap for ransom.

Amanda Knox is not lucky to get out of jail: she is lucky not have to have spent a few terrified weeks in a cellar or cave, having peripheral parts of herself sliced off and sent to her family through the post, before being found, almost certainly dead, in a car boot somewhere on payment of a ransom. Meredith Kercher was very unlucky, but also possibly, and we will never know for sure, brave enough not to cooperate with Amanda's would-be kidnappers.

A further observation might be that a young member of an important organized crime family, might have felt the need to pull off a major crime to prove his worth. If this was it, it couldn't have gone more wrong. As Medawar has observed elsewhere, "clogs to clogs in three generations" applies to organized crime families as well as industrialists.


Update:
The Appeal Court has published its reasoning over Miss Knox's acquittal.
There has been some deabte over whether Miss Knox might have been convicted on the evidence produced by the Italian prosecution, in a "UK" or US Court.

There is no such thing as a "UK Court"; an English Court is presumably what is meant, as the victim came from a long way South of Hadrian's Wall.

But the question really ought to be , what repercussions would there have been for the chief prosecutor and the detectives involved? Because they are the only ones who might be convicted of anything in an English Crown Court on the basis of the case they presented against Miss Knox and her boyfriend! What they did may be legal in Italy, but as the Appeal Court Judge has made very clear, it's definitely not acceptable in Italy and it's certainly not a way to solve a murder.

The case against Miss Knox and her boyfriend looks, for all the world, like an attempt to fill in the obvious two-person gap in the case against Rudy Guede, which is very incomplete despite, in some ways because of, his guilty plea. We'd be a lot nearer the truth if he'd fought the case and forced the prosecution to produce more of their evidence against him.

But that might have cast a spotlight on names and faces which the world still hasn't seen or heard about. Given a choice between that, and a sixteen year prison stretch, Mr Guede willingly takes the porridge. Which implies that the obvious two-person gap is in reality filled by much more frightening and resourceful personalities than those of Miss Knox and her boyfriend.

Forced Labour in Skane

This link is to an article reporting that human rights researchers in Sweden have found that at least seven Irish organized crime gangs are using forced labour on construction contracts in Sweden, with the slaves receiving little help or concern from Swedish authorities and, even more shamefully, no detectable concern from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office at all. It is apparently being left to the Serious and Organized Crime Agency and local (English) police forces to do all the work, and they obviously have no diplomatic power to pressure the Swedish government into living up to one of the most basic responsibilities of a government in the civilized world: to stop slavery happening and to punish the slavers.

Whilst the Daily Mail concentrates on those slaves who may be British subjects, it appears that practically all of them have been trafficked through the UK, which makes their welfare a British responsibility regardless of where the gangsters involved originally kidnapped them from. The current British Prime Minister is an appeaser at heart, and nothing would pain him more than to embarrass a fellow European politician on behalf of down and outs who don't own a single top-end Rangerover between them, but using the very considerable power of his office to protect the weak against the venal and ruthless is one of the duties that goes with all the power and privilege. The Swedish Prime Minister should not feel humiliated by being taken to task for this: the dishonour and humiliation lies in allowing it to happen, and that would appear to cover several successive British Home Secretaries from the early nineties to the present day, as well.

Stalkers in Central Texas

The unlovely pair on the left are stalkers, active in Fredericksburg. Readers with names, addresses and other useful details about them are welcome to post anonymous comments here. Medawar would also be interested to hear victims of this pair other than the lady who took this phonetrait. It would be interesting to know how far out of Fredericksburg their writ (if they are literate) runs. It would be helpful if anyone suggesting names states red or blue so we know which is which.

Markrepcarinabking

The above "follower" has been blocked on suspicion of being some form of spam follower.
Unless Medawar receives an intelligent communication which convinces him that something other than spam was intended, that follower will remain blocked.

Fresh Slavery Arrests

Three more people have been arrested in connection with slavery adn servitude offences at Green Acre caravan park in South West Bedfordshire. See Link.
So far, everyone ever arrested in England under the "Slavery and Servitude" Section 71 of the Coroner's and Justice Act, has been a member of the same, Connors, family.

However, it is becoming apparent from the testimony of liberated slaves, that some of them were traded, and had originally been abducted by persons unconnected with the Connors family. It isn't clear how effectively the new laws deal with the trading of persons for forced labour. The basic techniques employed, seem remarkably consistent regardless of who the slave-holders and traders are, and this would seem to indicate that the practice has been going on for long enough for "best" practice to be established and disseminated, albeit within a narrow community.

Medawar hopes that the Proceeds of Crime Act will be applied in all of these cases, because Section 71 appears to set a maximum prison term of 14-15 years, and some of the slaves have been held for longer than that. If there cannot be complete justice, there must be reparation.

Cocaine, Cartels and Vermin

The people who committed this atrocity are apparently concerned that their good names will be sullied by allegations made by public-spirited bloggers.

Recently, Ms Cherie Booth QC, sitting as a Crown Court Recorder, came to the startling conclusion that a cocaine smuggler did not deserve a custodial sentence. (Fortunately, the court of appeal begged to differ.)

Quite apart from the fact that any Recorder whose son earns a living as a football agent really ought to declare a conflict of interest and decline to hear cases related to the supply of class A drugs, there's a whole raft of liberal opinion that seems completely oblivious to the nature of the trade which supplies them with a brief, sordid and never entirely satisfactory thrill. That, in fact, is the effect of the drug they take and not the fact that it's illegal: cocaine damages the parts of the brain associated with empathy. Shocking and awful as this picture is, no cokehead can look on it and feel anything but anger at the fact that someone finds fault with him and his habit.

It's psychosis in powder form: a way of leaving the human race.

New Tories: Corruption

A further link from the Daily Telegraph for those who wonder why the New Tories are intent on destroying the country.

"My Subjects, Like Any Other"

The words of Charles the Second, when asked about the legal status of slaves, former slaves and coloured people on St Helena and other colonies. Although Parliament likes to date the abolition of slavery from when it finally took action, a couple of centuries later, (and only after the High Court had, in 1773, made essentially the same ruling as Charles,) it was only the post civil war vanity of Parliament which prevented slavery being made illegal on the spot when Charles spoke, as he was being asked for his formal opinion on the law.

So how, then, do we react to the news that Bedfordshire Police have rescued two dozen men from forced labour and being detained against their will, for up to fifteen years, on a Traveller's Site in South West Bedfordshire, near the Buckinghamshire border?

See link
and indeed, link as the police now have their side of the story online.

Medawar thinks that any reaction other than cold fury is probably wrong.
If it hadn't been for Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Baker suspending the old laws on slavery for some ill-defined European and UN action, which never amounted to anything except a green light to restart the slave trade, those arrested today would have been facing the death penalty if convicted.

For whatever reason, when the UN and European Commission first asked Great Britain to do away with the death penalty for aggravated trafficking, Jim Callaghan refused. (It is said that his words were "I am against the death penalty in principle, but I'm not silly enough to abolish it for pirates and slave-traffickers." Whether he used those exact words or not, this is undoubtedly a fair reflection of his thinking. Thatcher and Baker did not think at all: they merely gave into pressure from people who thought progress would be effected by "modernising" this brutal but effective part of English law.)

The death penalty is off the table, but this case already shows every sign of being at the most extreme end of the possible offenses under the more recent, 2010, anti-slavery laws. There must be no half-measures: if fairly convicted, the harshest possible sentence must be passed. It would be a terrible mistake for judges to hold a little bit back in case there is a worse offence sometime in the future, because that would invite just such an offence.

Britain was free of this scourge for more than a century precisely because the first few slavers to be sentenced, suffered the most brutal punishments the State could mete out. Slavery is a crime for calculating men, not sociopaths compelled by some internal disorder, and brutal deterrents demonstrably work with this crime. And, yes, it is worse than murder.

And it will be interesting to see if those guilty of this abomination, are part of the Traveller's groups who have been playing the victim to such perfection recently, aided by certain journalists, Bishops and actresses who seem to have, not rose-tinted glasses, but rose-tinted corneal grafts.

Most importantly, this link is to the official register of plot-owners at the site. The relevant entries are under Little Billington, Greenacres, Gypsy Lane. This is a document of public record and you are fully entitled to download and keep a copy.

Update:
Four men, all from the Connors family, have been charged. See link.
It is likely that more charges will materialize against these four, and against others higher up the food chain, in due course.