How to protect yourself against harassment

How to protect yourself against harassment

 "I left my ex-girlfriend a year ago. She didn't take it well and, because she's jealous by nature, she started sending me over a hundred messages a day and making more and more calls on my phone, ending up at my home or place of work, even going so far as to ask my colleagues about me. The situation has become so stressful that I now take a different route to work and have had to change my phone number. What can I do legally? " 

N, Geneva

It would appear that you are a victim of what is commonly referred to as the "stalking"In other words, obsessively pursuing someone. Typically, the "stalkerThe "stalker" will adopt behaviours such as watching the victim or constantly seeking proximity to them. The person targeted will become fearful, or even be forced to change their life as the stalker's actions intensify.

Unlike countries with an Anglo-Saxon tradition, such as the United States and Australia, Swiss law does not have a specific criminal offence for such behaviour. In Switzerland, the offence generally used against a person who obsessively pursues their victim is that of coercion within the meaning of article 181 of the Criminal Code. This provision punishes the act of forcing someone to do or not to do an act, or even to tolerate it, by adopting violent behaviour, making threats or in any way hindering their freedom of action.

This may be the case when the perpetrator bothers the victim by inundating her with messages or by regularly going to places where she is in order to provoke contact. However, for obstruction to be punishable by law, the pressure suffered by the victim must be repeated, be of a certain intensity and continue for a relatively long time.

What is special about Swiss law is that the person who is the target of the harassment must also change his or her behaviour as a result of the actions of the "harasser".stalker ". The fact that the victim - as you have been forced to come to terms with - cuts her phone line, takes a different route to go to a place where she usually goes or changes the times she arrives at work are all typical changes in her behaviour.

The considerable stress you are enduring to the point of forcing you to change your daily routine should open the way for a criminal complaint. If you don't want it to come to that, you should know that you can also bring a civil action for protection of personality to have a judge forbid your ex-girlfriend from behaving in the way you are suffering.