romantics are creepy!!

ie it wasn't the letter that was illegal, it was waiting for someone outside their work and then secretly following them home.

also she didn't "take him to court", she informed the sherriff that she had been followed home and the sherriff cited the guy w/ a fine.

A couple of times recently, I was in an internet cafe late at night, on messenger, and someone added me to their contact list. And when I said "Who are you?" they said "I saw you in the internet cafe, I think you're beautiful" or some such creepy nonsense. I didn't like thinking that they must have come up right behind me in order to be able to read my username. Unless they had binoculars. I don't know which possibility unnerves me more.

But it also displays the typical girly reaction; "I don't fancy you, so you have no right to find me attractive."

No, it's "I don't know you, so you have no right to follow me and put letters through my door".

The tone of the article kind of suggests it is crazy for the girl to be anything but flattered. I don't really see what is flattering about someone who hasn't even met you being fixated on you. It is scary.

Back on topic, I think putting a note through someone's door is a lot less scary and a bit more respectful than some things a truly creepy and obsessed man could have done to her. Though I guess it depends on the content of the note. But if it was politely asking for a date, then he may well have thought it was less embarrassing all round than chatting her up at work, approaching her in the street etc.

I know this terribly gender-traitorous of me, so I'll stop short of wondering how much different this would have been *had* he actually been attractive to her.

I'm not saying the prior incident constitutes breaking the law but certainly explains the girl ringing the cops when same guy shows up AGAIN, this time at her house.

Dear fucking God. People today, waste of taxpayers money, blah blah *goes off to read the Daily Mail*

I'm not saying the guy deserves to have to pay 200 quid but for fuck's sake, the guy loitered at her work and left her a "love letter" and got in trouble for it (I'm assuming just for loitering in the bank, security guards get antsy), and then less than a month later stayed around all day and followed her home, and somehow she's the object of ridicule here and a completely unreasonable person?

Dude did something stupid. Dude got fined for it. Dude is obviously still pining but isn't going to shell out another 200 pounds. FIN (cue dalmation puppy on a unicycle)

xpost Dan is OTM! Also I wonder how the dude's gf of SEVEN YEARS feels! WTF!

I'm just playing devil's advocate to everyone that thinks this dude is a creep. He's a bit of a div with a rubbish way with the ladies, yes, but he's hardly a danger to society.

Besides, if a guy is deluded enough to think a girl will respond favourably to a letter through her door left by a guy who saw her at work and followed her home, he is obviously a little unhinged from reality. How could she be sure he was harmless?

Despite his lawyer saying he knows that he did something stupid. It sounds like he's still kind of obsessed and thinks his pleading guilty will impress the girl.

And lo, Ally turns out to be more frightening than anyone else mentioned so far in this thread...

xx-post

Are you new?

to briefly address your question ailsa: the scots law of breach of the peace is so flexible as to be able to be put towards any action which can be deemed to be disturbing to a member or members of the public; it's really a catch-all crime (it's because of this almost indeterminate nature of the crime that it's been taken to task quite a lot, from what I remember, in strasbourg). here's the definition from a quick scout around the internet (reads like macdonald to me but there's no citation) (found on an activists webpage no less):

conduct "genuinely alarming and disturbing, in its context, to any reasonable person ... it is clear that something substantially greater than mere irritation is involved"

so yeah - another one of our problematic criminal laws folx!!

conduct "genuinely alarming and disturbing, in its context, to any reasonable person ... it is clear that something substantially greater than mere irritation is involved"

So you could be fined for eating an ice cream cone, alone, out on the street?

(when I was 13)

“your husband’s a lucky man”

i actually heard this in an airport bar