This case revolves around “typical stalking behavior”, the public prosecutor said at the end of the session. He paraphrases the words of suspect Farida. †I was upset. I wanted an explanation. I wanted to talk.” Then, dryly: “Well, if he doesn’t want to, and you continue: then you have stalking.”
Farida (46) is a petite woman with pink powder on her light brown cheekbones. Her story started on a dating site, she met “sir” there last August. They agreed a few times. “Everything was going well until September, when he started to distance himself,” she says. “I didn’t understand why, I acted normal to mister.”
Her voice is friendly, her curly hair is tied back with a diadem and pins. She works in elderly care five mornings a week. After her father died last year, she moved in with her sick mother.
“You did not accept that he distanced himself, you kept making contact,” the judge said. The victim went to the police, after which a local police officer told Farida in November that she was no longer allowed to contact him. “Sir stated that you called again that same day,” said the judge.
Farida: “To ask why he did this. I did not understand.”
The judge: “What was not clear to you?”
“I just wanted to talk to Mr. quietly.”
“Shortly afterwards you called his employer with the story that you had been raped by him.”
“That is not true.”
Farida insists she did nothing wrong. “I could never frighten him, I had no evil intentions.” He should have started the conversation with her, she says. “Then it would have been clear to me.”
Farida began to intrude on his life in other ways as well. She contacted a friend of his. “I met the friend on a dating site,” she says. “I didn’t consciously look it up, they happened to know each other.” That she found volunteer work next to his house in November is also a coincidence, says Farida. “I came there when it was still good between us.” Farida also took Zumba classes at the gym where he worked. “I told him honestly about that.”
The judge: “You had no contact for a while, until February.”
Farida: “Yes. That was very good contact.”
The victim saw it differently, says the judge. “Sir says: ‘Suddenly she was at my door again’. After you called him 36 times that day. He was shocked, didn’t know what to do. Then he did talk to you.” The man filed a report.
On February 24, Farida was arrested after coming back to his house.
Since that day it has been “over and out,” she says. “This person is a black page in my life. He does not exist for me.” She believes that he “went too far” by filing a complaint against her. “When he was chasing me, he was also sending 53 chats a day.”
But now she swears with “her hand on the Bible” that she will never contact him again.
The officer “doesn’t buy anything for that,” he says. “This is not my first stalking case.” He is “very skeptical” but gives Farida “the benefit of the doubt” by sitting at the bottom of the directive, demanding 60 hours of community service, minus two days she was already in prison, and a contact ban. “As far as I’m concerned, every time you contact him, you’re going to jail for five days.”
The judge convicts Farida of stalking and follows the officer’s demand. The contact ban takes effect immediately. “I do that because after the stop meeting with the local police officer, you continued the same day.”
Farida has another question. Can she go back to Zumba class?
“You can go to Zumba. But if you see him walking, you must walk the other way. If something happens, it’s your fault.”
“I stay as far away from him as possible.”