Hi all -
Looking for advice - potentially legal help or other solutions to prevent a stalker situation escalating.
The first incident, back at the end of July, an individual private messaged me on instagram (I was not following her, and she didn't appear to be following me). She introduced herself as my ex-colleague who has been let go over 2 years ago due to mass lay off at our company. I did not even interact with her at the company, it was purely hi and bye, how was your weekend conversation.
The chat carries on as a ramble of broken english spewing random thoughts - mainly about being possessed by spirits for months, knowing the names of my siblings, being unemployed, ghosts hacking her, ghosts stealing her school records, ghosts stealing her long term memory - etc the list goes on - there's no rationality in her thinking and nothing she says makes any coherent sense). It's absolutely all over the place. She's obviously suffering some mental health issues.
The message ends with a photo from the lobby of the apartment I live in, asking me to meet her face to face. Thankfully we were not home and we did not respond or try to engage with her. We quickly blocked her and hoped we would not hear from her again.
Since then I have asked some colleagues to contact her to confirm it is indeed her, and she cryptically confirmed saying it is her. She would not go into any of the details mentioned above and said she needs to speak to me because the situation is quite complex and they would not understand. We gave our apartment a photo of her and made sure she does not enter the lobby or premise again.
Everything was quiet until last night. My wife receives a message from a good samaritan stranger who took a photo of a poster that was posted in a few places on High Street in Sai Ying Pun. This poster has a photo of my wife, her name and where she's from, and says that she's married to me with my full name. It also goes on to say she's been married multiple times, divorced, has aborted babies all before being married to me. All of this is absolutely preposterous and again does not make any coherent sense.
After the first incident we were creeped out but ultimately felt bad due to the mental health issues she's struggling with but after the poster with slander posted around Sai Ying Pun, her motives have clearly become malicious. We also know from my colleague she lives somewhere in Sai Ying Pun so assumed incident 1 and 2 must be connected.
We went to the police after both incidents and were given the same response: Due to the messages not being criminally threatening, the police have no power to pursue this further until something illegal happens. Their recommendation is to contact a civil lawyer to start a legal procedure to get the police involved. We have no idea what this entails but we're hoping someone can point us in the right direction - either legally, or what other steps we can take to ensure this does no escalate further - we don't even want to imagine what that could look like.
Thanks!
F