Criminal Harassment

What Is Criminal Harassment?
1. Bill C-126 states that it is illegal to engage in conduct that causes another person to fear for their safety or the safety of anyone known to them.
2. Stalking or harassing to cause reasonable fear
3. Actions that cause reasonable fear for your safety or the safety of someone you know.
4. When the conduct involves following, or communicating with a person, the action must happen more than once to be considered criminal harassment. It has to be repeated, persistent, and frequent.
5. When the harassment involves watching a person or acting in a threatening way, it need happen only once for the law to apply, but the harassment must be sufficient to give rise to a reasonable fear, and the harasser must intend to cause fear.

Examples Of Criminal Harassment
Definitions
What Is Reasonable Fear?
Who Usually Does The Stalking?
Other Criminal Offences
What Help Is Available For Criminal Harassment?
What Else Can Be Done To Stop Criminal Harassment?

Examples Of Criminal Harassment:
1. Repeatedly following;
2. Repeatedly visiting, calling or writing, either directly to the person or through someone else;
3. Watching the person, her home or workplace;
4. Doing something that threatens the person or any member of her family.

Definitions:
Stalking:
*Prowling around a person’s home
*Following or tracking a person
*Keeping watch over a person or a place that they go to regularly (their home or workplace)

Harass:
*To trouble or annoy a person continually
*Bothering or tormenting a person
*Pestering, becoming a nuisance, or causing a person to worry over a situation created by the harasser.

What Is Reasonable Fear?
1. Having a fear for which there is a reason.
2. The fear must not be based on exaggeration of the situation or on imagined problems.
3. It can mean the fear a reasonable person would have for their safety.
4. It can mean fear caused by anxiety or distress over the actions of a harasser.

Who Usually Does The Stalking?
1. Stalkers, like other offenders, come from all walks of life.
2. They can be male or female, although the majority of stalkers are male.
3. They are often ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends, but some are only casual acquaintances or strangers.
4. The harassment usually starts when a woman leaves her husband or boyfriend, or when she rejects a man’s offer for a date.

Other Criminal Offences
Criminal harassment has been a crime in Canada since 1993. Although stalking was a crime before 1993, it was treated under different criminal code provisions. These other provisions still apply:
*Trespassing at night
*Making threats to cause death or bodily harm to a person, or to damage property or belongings, or to harm a person’s animal or bird
*Making indecent or repeated telephone calls intended to annoy or harass
*Intimidating another person by watching their home or workplace or persistently following them
*Committing mischief that interferes with a person’s use of their property, or causes damage to property

S.810 of the criminal code is a remedy that can be used for all theses offences. It allows a provincial court judge to order a person to enter into recognizance or agree to a "peace bond", if that person threatened another person with personal injury.

What Help Is Available For Criminal Harassment?
The law in Canada provides several options. What is done depends on your situation. A person can:
1. File a criminal harassment complaint with the police.
2. Ask the court for a peace bond (the other person then must promise the court that he or she will keep the peace and not harm or harass you).
3. Contact a lawyer and get a restraining order from the civil court.
4. Contact a victim services program. They will know the process for all available options and services in your community.
5. Contact Public Legal Education Information Services or PLEIS NB for information.

What Else Can Be Done To Stop Criminal Harassment?
1. Alert friends, family and co-workers to watch for the stalker.
2. Document everything that the stalker has done, including dates and times that he approached or followed.
3. Keep any notes that he has sent, record messages from the answering machine.
4. Ask witnesses to make notes as well.
5. Call the police as soon as the stalking begins.
6. If the woman has a restraining order or peace bond to keep the harasser/stalker away, tell her to carry it with her at all times.
7. Refuse any gifts, invitations, or favours from the stalker.
8. Be very clear that you are not interested in the stalker.
9. Find someone to talk to - friend, family, or counsellor.

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