Just Trying to Help a Friend

Anonymous: “Amy L, is the one I love … Amy L is the one I love.”

Jojobriggs: “And Amy, I know you for the fake kind dirty slut you really are, remember that.”

Funfunfun: “So Amy you still sleeping around with your best friends men and trying to deny it or your own family members?”

Anonymous: “do not worry Amy this is all being said for your own good and betterment of yourself.”

JohnBradshawLayfiend: “Amy I love you. By god you are the sexies thing ever invented.”

Lola: “Go to hell along with Ame L she is a peace of crap.”

In May 2004, the comments on Amy Lawson’s blog arrived in quick succession, and all of them originated from the same IP address. She knew who it was and wondered when the harassment would ever end.

It was only 3 years earlier that Amy had been an outgoing high school junior in coastal Connecticut. In June 2001, one of Amy’s friends complained that someone—she assumed it was a man—was harassing her, constantly sending IMs. Amy decided to help her friend by sending an IM to this annoying pest, whose screen name was “Fink,” asking him to stop IMing her friend. Her request was polite but firm, and Fink did as she asked. But then he channeled all of his attention to Amy instead.

For the next 3 years, Amy was inundated with dozens of IMs every day from Fink. Since she used her full name as her screen name, it was easy for Fink to find her home address by searching the white pages online. At first, he sent gifts to her home: a teddy bear, flowers, cards. She quickly threw them away.

Later that summer when she went to the local gas station, a young male attendant about her age came over to her car to pump gas and began talking to her.

“You’re Amy, right?” he asked. Amy was puzzled for a moment until he introduced himself as Fink. She could hardly wait to leave. But before she could, Fink tried to give her a DVD. She handed it back to him, saying that she wasn’t interested, and drove away. Fink then started sending love letters to her home address. Again, she threw them away. When Amy graduated from high school in June 2002, Fink sent her a $100 money order through the mail as a graduation present. Amy sent it back to Fink; he returned it, and she sent it back to him again. But he was unrelenting: He sent it to Amy one more time, at which point she simply tossed the check on the end table in the living room. Finally, Amy’s mother found it, saw who it was from, and knowing Fink had been harassing Amy, promptly threw it in the trash.

Amy blocked all the IM screen names that she knew Fink had created and politely asked him to leave her alone. But he still wouldn’t take no for an answer. There were some weeks when there were no IMs, and then suddenly, he would send more IMs under a new screen name. His IMs and emails continued even after she moved to San Diego to start college in August 2003.

In May 2004, Fink’s IMs suddenly stopped. Amy thought the entire ordeal was over. She believed Fink had finally moved on, so she breathed a sigh of relief. But her joy was short-lived. Fink simply changed online mediums and started to post comments on her blog instead:

Bjbob899: maybe your just a spick now like your boyfriend

Bjbob899: dirty whore

Bjbob899: i was promised a blow job

AmyL: please stop Iming me

Bjbob899: you promised me a blow job at a race

AmyL: please stop IMing me

Bjbob899: So the blow job offer was a hustle?

AmyL: please stop IMing me

Bjbob899: ok white girl you win..Boy buy

Fink tracked down Amy’s boyfriend’s email address and began harassing him in hopes that he would ask Amy to respond.

When his appeals to Amy’s boyfriend went unheeded, Fink opened an account on the blog-hosting site LiveJournal and began posting an unrelenting stream of entries professing his love for Amy, all while she kept asking him to stop. On May 18, 2004, one of Fink’s posts made Amy very uneasy. Fink began talking about her parents’ house: “Can anybody say Egging a certain house on Geer ave [Amy’s parents lived on Geer Avenue] on video? Speaking of Geer ave this brings me to something I want to say about a former friend of mine named Amy L … I never judged you one bit you dirty rotten skank now did i? Amy your not even worth the bandwidth this fuckin journal is written on.”

That evening, Fink hammered away at Amy with IMs from four different screen names. But this time, the tone of his IMs began to frighten her:

6:46:18 PM: Amy what happens to your parents house tonight I am not responsible for

6:47:40 PM: you intruded in my life for the last time you cruel psychopathic bitch

6:49:33 PM: just for the record I feel bad about your parents house but you made it personal not me

6:53:55 PM: Look Aimee I am sorry I can not change the past

6:54:45 PM: This hurts me more then it hurts you

6:55:27 PM: But we both realiise what you did to me was screwed up

6:56:43 PM: Amy do you not care about anything

6:57:28 PM: lol I threten to do something to your parents house and you do not care lol … some daughter you are

6:58:24 PM: all’s i want is an appology

7:03:50 PM: Amy

7:03:51 PM: Amy

7:03:53 PM: Amy

7:03:54 PM: Amy

7:04:15 PM: Amy

7:10:20 PM: I am sorry

7:10:28 PM: I love you always have always will

7:13:27 PM: we used to be best friends … what changed

7:15:18 PM: Amy I am offering to stop

7:16:35 PM: All’s I want is an ppology

Amy reread one of his comments in sheer disbelief: “I love you always have always will.”

“Those were pretty deep feelings for someone who knows me in no greater detail than having pumped my gas one time,” she said. “I wanted to call the police before this, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure they would consider him sending me gifts enough to arrest him for stalking. I had no idea it would get to this point.”

The next day, Amy’s father, Bryan, went to the local police department and filed a complaint on Amy’s behalf. He told the police about the online harassment she was enduring, how she was frightened, and how Fink had threatened to damage her parents’ house. The officer assigned to the case asked Amy to fax any relevant information directly to him.

“Within 24 hours, the officer was holding 25 pages of conversations, away messages, etc. that showed Fink had been harassing me,” Amy said. She was elated when the police officer called her with news that an arrest warrant for Fink was being issued and that an officer had warned Fink in person to stop harassing Amy.

But Fink didn’t like the police appearing on his doorstep. He didn’t waste any time posting his thoughts on LiveJournal the next day:

I took something wayyyyyy too far yesterday and I would like to apologise. Yes cops showed up at my door at midnight yesterday to warn me, and yes I was shocked. I thretned to egg somebodies parents house … Keep in mind these were threats made online and had no real merit. But anyway was I immature in making them? Yes I was. Did I take things with Amy to far? Yes I did. Amy and I used to be really good friends … And if you do not like that Bow wow wow and kiss my ass.

Fink continued to post his heartfelt feelings for Amy, while she simply waited for the police to arrest him.

On May 24, Fink posted the following entry: “I am not mad at Amy for calling the cops on me even though she lives in california now and I in ct…It makes me mad that as a Tax payer Police are responding to such bullshit calls when somebody was murdered here last week. Amy lives in California and since I did not make the threat to her parents directly it is not considered thetening and plus there has to be reason to belive that I was serious with the threat which I obvisoely was not.”

The officer assigned to Amy’s case told her to remove Fink from her IM buddy list and to ignore him, which she did. But as she discovered more background information about Fink, her worries intensified.

Amy began to suspect that the police didn’t think Fink was a direct threat to her because she was in California. Her friends on the East Coast did some research on Fink, whose full name was Franklin Fink, and discovered a long list of arrests. In 1999, Fink was arrested and convicted for harassing and threatening a girl. He received 1 year of probation. In 2001, he was arrested again for breach of peace, harassment, threatening, and computer crime. He was convicted on five of seven charges and received 3 years of probation, but his sentence was suspended. Amy knew that the police department was well aware of Fink’s past activities, but she didn’t know why they weren’t doing anything to help her.

“I was scared of [him],” she said.

When Fink posted that he had sold his hard drive, Amy called the officer assigned to her case, telling him that this was Fink’s attempt to discard any incriminating evidence. The officer just said that Fink probably responded that way “since I scared him into thinking we would take his computer away from him that first night we went over there.”

Amy didn’t know what to think or believe. One minute she was angry; the next she was just plain frightened. “His actions and words placed me in severe emotional distress and put me in fear, not only of my own well-being, but that of my family back home,” she said. “I did not want to simply ‘forgive and forget’ these incidents. If I moved on with my life, and ignored Fink’s actions, I knew that I would be leaving the door open for other women and girls to fall prey to this bully.”

A few days later, on May 29, Amy’s father went to the gas station where Fink worked and confronted him in person. Amy’s father told Fink to leave his family alone, and if Fink didn’t, he would return with the police officer on the case. Fink’s LiveJournal post 4 days later revealed Fink’s darker side: “I had one hand banging on the counter and my other clinching a boxcutter in my pocket since I was contemplating either punching the guy right then and there or even stabbing him.”

“Honestly, I have never spoken to someone or seen anyone whose train of thought was more … disheveled,” Amy said.

Amy began filing complaints everywhere: AOL Instant Messenger, LiveJournal, Fink’s ISP, and Yahoo! (the host for the email accounts through which he harassed her). She also kept contacting the officer handling her case.

By June 16, Amy’s mother told her that there was a signed arrest warrant against Fink, but it could take up to 3 weeks to grant it even if the judge found probable cause.

An officer from the Connecticut State Police called Amy the next day. She had sent them information about her case and plenty of background on Fink’s prior arrests. According to the state trooper who called her, Fink was still on probation, and online harassment was a violation of his probation. The trooper didn’t think it would be hard to charge Fink on those grounds. Although Amy was excited when she hung up the phone, nothing happened.

On June 26, Amy was still waiting for the arrest warrant to be issued, and Fink was posting on LiveJournal that he was the person being wronged and asked why Amy was blaming him.

“I sat there crying, because he made me so mad,” said Amy. “He makes this seem as if he had done nothing wrong, when it was pretty damn obvious that he had. He had no right to do this to me—make me upset, make me sad, make me doubt myself.”

On July 2, Amy returned to Connecticut to visit her family and discovered that Fink had been arrested the night before.

Fink’s court date for Amy’s online harassment case was set for July 15. Amy and her sister went to the courthouse, but Fink didn’t show up. A bail letter was mailed to him, notifying him that he had to appear for the rescheduled court date of August 4 or face the consequences.

Fink began to IM Amy again:

“I love you why wont you say anything”

“Dirty whore”

“Amy I just have one thing to say … I am sorry you waisted a whole day for me … And This jury trial thing that your about to be summoned for I have nothing to do with … Nothing personal I hate dragging your name threw the mud but I have no choice. So it’s not personal … I am sorry. thats all I wanted to say good bye”

On August 3, Amy talked to the head of probation in Litchfield County in Connecticut, where Fink had previously been arrested. He told Amy that Fink was just trying to control her and her emotions.

The next day, which was Fink’s rescheduled court date, the prosecutor’s office called Amy. Fink claimed that he had not been online since he had been arrested and had not contacted Amy. But the prosecutor produced copies of the IMs that Fink had actually been sending her. The prosecutor told Amy, “We’re going to raise his bail because … he’s kind of a weird little guy.”

“Kinda weird?” Amy said.

“All right, he’s a weird guy,” the prosecutor said.

On August 13, Fink’s bail was increased from $10,000 to $45,000, which his family couldn’t post. The state attorney told Amy that they “slapped the golden bracelets” on him and put him in a jail cell. Fink spent 1 month in jail and finally pled guilty to the charges. However, he did not receive any additional jail time. The court simply restricted his internet use and ordered him to undergo psychological counseling. His computer was also confiscated, and his ISP account was canceled, along with his LiveJournal and Yahoo! accounts.

And Amy? She’s married now with a family. She endured years of harassment from Fink, but her persistence paid off. Her ordeal is finally over.

Amy Lawson (with her father, Bryan), harassed after trying to help a friend [Courtesy of Amy Caruso]

 

Franklin Fink, who finally stopped harassing Amy after many years [Courtesy of Norwich Police Department]