What Is Sexual Harrassment

Q: Is it sexual harrassment when a woman flaunts her myriad of sexual fantasies in e-mail to us? Could this be a civil charge? I don't wan't this sexual stuff being thrust in my face. Does anybody here want it? It's heinous and perhaps her spiritual authorities should be told about it so they can provide help for her, to refrain from this sexual harrassment which stretches across the world. The Internet certainly provides people with enormous opportunities to harrass people sexually. Is anybody here having nightmares because of her sexual posts and the masochistic posts about mutilating people? They were particularly nasty. Plus the hundreds of posts the last few days telling people to (well, you know...) themselves. Can this woman be stopped legally?

A: On the internet? Generally not very easily. The SBC/Yahoo abuse policy has a clause about being persistently harassing, but since she's posting through third-party newsservers like Motzarella that have no such clause, the only way to get her turned off legally would be to file a civil suit against her and subpoena Motzarella

or SBC/Yahoo or both to confirm that she's actually the one making the insane posts to a court of law. Then, she'd almost certainly lose her home DSL connection- ...but she could still post from the library, so that still wouldn't solve anything long-term. Then, you'd have to continue to pursue the case until you'd gotten an injuction against her continuing to post abusive, harassing messages, and if she violated that, it'd either be a contempt of court thing, or maybe a 72-hour psych eval. Except I'd worry that going that far would probably make her sufficiently unhinged that she'd go completely off the rails, and probably harm her daughter, so I wouldn't recommend it.