DETECTION - AND SUCCESS.

\"Stop worrying; he can't do anything; just ignore him\".

That's what Lena's boyfriend said when she told him she was being cyberstalked.

She was a Spanish girl I met at a Christmas meal. We were both 22; her real name wasn't Lena.

We arranged to meet again because we had similar views on love and life.

\"Being cyberstalked\", she suddenly said to me in her broken English.

\"What? YOU are?\", I said,

\"Yes - me am\".

It turned out that for at least a month she'd been receiving emails which were either rude or violent in nature. The only person she'd told (before me) was her current boyfriend. He'd said \"stop worrying; he can't do anything; just ignore him\".

The msgs had come from different addresses, in both English and Spanish, but they'd all called her \"Vaca\" (Cow).

\"I know they are from the same person\", she said.

\"Do you know who?\"

\"No I have p*ss*d off many boys cos they want sleep with me but I won't\".

So I did some detective work. I don't want to sound as if I was \"Columbo\", as it wasn't difficult in the end, but I did get lucky.

I asked her to forward to me any more msgs she received from this cretin and then I compared what they said.

I can't speak Spanish but Lena translated what was said (though lines like \"Mi gran pene\" spoke for themselves).

I could see that whoever it was had a much better command of Spanish than English, which pretty much told me he was Spanish. She wrote down names of all her ex's and Spanish boys she could remember having turned down. I then discussed with her whether any could write English, whether any were particularly annoyed at having been dumped or ignored, and whether any were computer nerds and likely to have multiple email addys.

We ended up with 4 possibilities. 3 of them Lena had email addys for (quite aside from the ones she'd been sent them from). The 4th was a boy she and her mates had mocked when they'd seen him naked in the swimming pool, and he'd harassed one of the mates, so he seemed a distinct possibility.

We may have hit a dead end!

But all I did was send emails to the 3. Within a couple of days 2 replied in good English, claiming they had no idea what I was talking about. They seemed genuine.

\"So the 3rd's our guy\", I said to comfort her, not really believing that it could be that easy.

BUT IT WAS.

Lena had a postal address for him, so she told her brother back in Spain, who told the police. Who questioned him and discovered that he'd been cyberstalking other girls too.

Now, I've made it sound easy and quick.
It was neither.

Nor were the police as ready to pounce as I've made it seem.

But everything I've said is true - so there's one less cyberstalker in the world.

[I hope it doesn't sound like I'm making light of a serious situation (I'm open to comments - good and bad), but I'm hoping this will encourage other women to pursue these b*st*rds in anyway they can.]