Students remembered Katy Benoit Tuesday evening at the annual Katy Benoit Campus Safety Awareness Month Keynote Address. So many people attended the event that chairs had to be added to the Vandal Ballroom so all the attendees could sit.
Events this month aimed to educate the campus community about relevant safety issues in memory of Benoit, who was murdered on Aug. 22, 2011 outside her home. She was a graduate student at UI when former professor and intimate partner Ernesto Bustamante killed her.
“The things that you always think happen to other people can happen to you and they do happen to you,” said Gary Benoit, Katy’s father.
He and Katy’s mother, Janet Benoit, attended the event. This is one of the first times they returned to campus since their daughter was murdered.
Janet Benoit said that “you can tell that they (University of Idaho) care about their commitment to student safety.”
This year, Jennifer Landhuis, the director of the Stalking Prevention, Awareness and Resource Center (SPARC), gave a presentation on stalking. Landhuis explained the scarcity of resources for stalking victims in the U.S. She said the SPARC is the only organization that deals specifically with stalking — and she has a full-time staff of two people. Many people don’t know the definition of stalking, she said.
“The definition that we use is that it’s a pattern of behavior directed at a specific person that would cause a reasonable person to feel fear,” Landhuis said.
People ages 18 to 24 experience the highest rates of stalking, Landhuis said. While women are more likely to experience stalking than men, those instances still occur.
Most stalkers pursue they victims online, according to data Landhuis presented. Stalkers send messages over everything from email to What’sApp. Stalkers also pursue their victims by following them, waiting for them, showing up unexpectedly, leaving their victims unwanted items and more.
Landhuis said stalkers also sabotage and monitor their victims. This can appear as spreading rumors, creating fake social media accounts, sharing sexually explicit information, recording videos, monitoring their victims’ location with GPS trackers and using audio recording devices.
Landhuis said stalking can cause hypervigilant behaviors in victims, which outsiders may view as paranoia. She encouraged the audience to treat victims with compassion and understand their perspective.
“What happens in these cases is the victim is being stalked through some form of technology and we all think that the victim is paranoid because we think that can’t possibly happen,” Landhuis said. “We don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. In actuality, what’s happening is the victim is hypervigilant. That hypervigilance has kept them safe and it’s kept them alive, but we label it as paranoia.”
Lex Miller can be reached at [email protected]